MKR Rallies After Grayscale MakerDAO Trust Launch

The MakerDAO Trust will allow accredited investors to gain exposure to one of DeFi’s leading protocols.

Grayscale, a leading digital asset management firm, continues to expand its roster of exchange-traded products.

On Aug. 13, the firm launched the Grayscale MakerDAO Trust, offering accredited investors exposure to the MKR token.

“The Trust offers investors the opportunity to gain exposure to $MKR, the utility and governance token for the Ethereum-based, autonomous organization MakerDAO,” Grayscale said.“

Investors responded to the news by driving up the price of MKR by 7% in less than two hours. MKR last changed hands for $2,082 after a slight retracement, currently sitting on a daily gain of 3.8%.

the-defiant — 24-hour MKR/USD. Source: CoinGecko.

The MakerDAO Trust is the latest in a spate of freshly launched crypto funds from Grayscale. Just last week, Grayscale launched funds investing in Bettensor (TAO) and Sui (SUI), bringing the number of single-asset digital asset funds offered by the firm to 20.

Grayscale also launched a decentralized AI fund in July, offering exposure to TAO, Filecoin (FIL), Livepeer (LPT), Near (NEAR), and Render (RNDR).

Maker is one of the fourth largest decentralized finance protocols, boasting nearly $7 billion in total value locked (TVL) and an annualized revenue of $88.5 million, according to DeFiLlama.

The news comes as MakerDAO aims to onboard $1 billion worth of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) via the “Tokenization Grand Prix” hosted by its money market protocol, SparkLend.

Spark began accepting applicants from asset issuers on Aug. 12. Last month, Blackrock’s tokenized U.S. treasuries fund. BUIDL, announced its intention to participate in the campaign.

The Grand Prix is part of MakerDAO’s “Endgame” overhaul, which will radically reshape MakerDAO in a bid to achieve sustainability moving forward.

MKR has fallen alongside the rest of the market over the last month, with its price slumping 25% in the last 30 days to last change hands for $2,100. Despite MKR’s price falling, Maker’s weekly active users are up 32% and earnings jumped 236% over the same period, according to TokenTerminal.