MakerDAO closes the year with this milestone

• Of all DeFi protocols, MakerDAO has seen the most revenue in 2023.
• This comes after it witnessed a significant TVL decline, and its DAI stablecoin briefly lost its peg.

MakerDao [MKR] has emerged as the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol with the most revenue in 2023, data from DefiLlama has shown.

Source: DefiLlama

This remarkable turnaround was fueled by an increase in the protocol’s DAI stablecoin supply and its integration of real-world assets and U.S. Treasury bills (T-bills), providing it with yields from rising interest rates.

Despite being second to Lido Finance [LDO] in total value locked (TVL), Maker has surpassed Lido in terms of revenue so far this year.  AMBCrypto found that Maker’s revenue totaled $103 million since the year began.

On the other hand, Lido has generated $60 million in revenue within the same period.

MakerDAO’s journey to the “top”

At the beginning of the year, Maker was displaced by liquid staking protocol Lido as the leading DeFi protocol in terms of TVL.

This was due to increased Ethereum [ETH] staking activity in expectation of Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade, which drove liquidity to the protocol. 

Maker’s troubles were further aggravated in March when its DAI stablecoin suffered a depeg following the unexpected collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which resulted in USD Coin [USDC] temporarily losing its parity to the dollar. 

How much are 1,10,100 MKRs worth today?

Before this event, MakerDAO’s Peg Stability Module (PSM) relied significantly on USDC to help stabilize the protocol’s DAI stablecoin at $1. In January, $2.4 billion of USDC backed DAI within the PSM, according to data from DefiLlama.

However, following USDC’s brief depeg in March, which seriously impacted DAI, causing it also to lose its dollar parity and pushing down its supply, Maker reduced its reliance on the stablecoin. By June, this had dropped by almost 80%. 

As the year progressed, Maker’s real-world assets (RWAs) vertical grew. These are on-chain variations of assets in traditional finance. Examples include real estate, bonds, stocks, commodities, invoices, trade receivables, etc.

Over 65% of Maker’s fee revenue by October came from its RWAs. However, by the end of October, the revenue it received from tokenized T-Bill products started to rally, dwarfing that which came from RWAs.

Source: Dune Analytics

At press time, Maker’s tokenized T-Bill products accounted for 52% of its revenue, while a mere 6.1% came from RWAs.