MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen has proposed building the decentralized finance project’s upcoming native chain, known as “NewChain,” using a fork of Solana’s codebase instead of the Ethereum Virtual Machine. This decision comes despite MakerDAO’s longstanding ties with Ethereum.
The “NewChain” is part of the fifth and final phase of the MakerDAO “Endgame” upgrade, announced in May. This phase is expected to take about three years to complete and will involve the full re-implementation of the Maker Protocol into a new standalone blockchain.
Christensen believes that the Solana codebase is the most promising option for NewChain. In a Twitter post, he explained that the Solana codebase is highly optimized and fits well with the objective of NewChain in fixing the technical debt of Maker.
In a proposal on the MakerDAO forum, Christensen outlined three key reasons for using Solana’s codebase. Firstly, he emphasized the technical quality of the codebase and its efficiency. Secondly, he pointed out that the Solana ecosystem has proven its resilience in facing challenges. Lastly, he mentioned that examples of the Solana codebase being forked and adapted for appchains already exist.
Christensen responded to questions regarding the decision to use Solana code over the Ethereum Virtual Machine. He explained that while the EVM is essential for building user-facing applications, it does not meet MakerDAO’s specific backend requirements. He believes that solutions like Solana or Sei are a better fit for those needs.
NewChain will primarily serve as the backend for MakerDAO’s SubDAO tokenomics and governance security, while Maker (MKR) and Dai (DAI) will continue to function on Ethereum.
