DAI Savings Rate is at 8%, just not for Americans

DAI deposits almost doubled following Christensen’s tweet, which said users can tap yields up to 8%

August 7, 2023 02:41 pm

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DAI Savings Rate (DSR) is paying up to 8% yields in a bid to “attract more users,” MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen said in a tweet on Monday.

DAI is MakerDAO’s decentralized stablecoin and can be minted by depositing collateral into a smart contract.

DAI token holders can opt into locking their DAI into a DSR contract, which accrues yield — the only additional costs to use DSR are gas transactions, which involve locking and unlocking the token.

DSR can be accessed via Spark Protocol, a borrowing and lending protocol and Aave spinoff catered specifically to DAI.

“The rate is so high because there are currently not that many people using the DAI Savings Rate – only about 8% of DAI holders use DSR currently,” Christensen tweeted.

The Enhanced DSR system had increased rates, according to Christensen, to attract additional users, adding that the savings rate will go back down once more people use it.

Following Christensen’s tweet, data from makerburn.com showed that DAI deposited into DSR has almost doubled, from roughly 396 million DAI on August 6 to 676 million DAI at the time of writing.

The doubling equates to a total of 14.1% of all circulating DAI on the market placed into DSR.

The DSR, notably, can only be accessed by customers outside of the US, and no users signed into a VPN will have access to Spark Protocol, Christensen said.

The news has alerted crypto internet personalities such as Chris Blec, who tweeted “Spark Protocol is going above and beyond what is required by law by blocking VPN users from accessing DAI Savings Rate.”

Blec has called this decision a “war on privacy.”

MakerDAO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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