The Endgame Plan: Restructuring MakerDAO for Resilience and Growth
Executive summary
The Endgame Plan is the most ambitious DAO-level restructuring proposal in DeFi history, and almost certainly the most controversial. Across multiple forum posts and a sprawling 47-page composite document, MakerDAO co-founder Rune Christensen proposed dissolving the existing protocol architecture into a federation of SubDAOs, migrating DAI to a new stablecoin (USDS) and MKR to a new governance token (SKY), expanding RWA collateral substantially, and ultimately positioning Maker as a multi-asset financial infrastructure provider rather than a single-stablecoin issuer. The plan is more strategic vision than technical specification, and its weakest aspect is the absence of detailed mechanism design for the proposed SubDAO interactions. By April 2026 most of the plan has been executed in some form: USDS launched, SKY launched, several SubDAOs are operational, RWA collateral exceeds $3B. The execution has been messier than the proposal anticipated and has produced material governance backlash, but the strategic thesis — that Maker needed to evolve beyond DAI-only and beyond ETH-collateral-only — has been substantially validated by the post-2022 stablecoin and RWA market evolution. DI rates the proposal as the right strategic call, executed unevenly, with implications still playing out three years post-publication.
Background and motivation
By mid-2022, MakerDAO faced a structural strategic crisis. DAI had grown to roughly $7B in circulation but was approximately 40-50% backed by USDC reserves, making DAI essentially a USDC derivative with extra steps. The Tornado Cash sanctions in August 2022 demonstrated that USDC-backing carried real censorship risk: Circle could freeze the underlying USDC, which would have catastrophic implications for DAI redeemability. Simultaneously, governance throughput was a chronic problem. MakerDAO's governance forum had become the highest-volume DAO governance venue in DeFi, but proposals routinely took months to advance, parameter updates were slow, and the protocol's competitive responsiveness was visibly inadequate against Frax, USDC, and emerging competitors. The MKR token had underperformed peers throughout 2022, and Rune Christensen — Maker's co-founder and largest individual MKR holder — had been increasingly explicit in forum posts that he viewed the existing structure as unsustainable. The Endgame Plan was Christensen's response, posted in a series of forum threads in late 2022 and consolidated into a fuller set of Endgame documents in 2023. The plan's intellectual lineage is unusual. Rather than drawing on academic distributed-systems or financial-engineering literature, the plan draws on organisational-design literature (specifically Charles Eisenstein's writing on subsidiarity, Elinor Ostrom's commons-governance work, and earlier DAO experiments like ConstitutionDAO), traditional banking-regulation frameworks (Basel III capital structures, money-market-fund regulation), and crypto-native experiences with Yearn-style sub-team structures. The motivating question, as Christensen frames it, is broader than typical protocol papers: how should a DeFi protocol be organised at scale, given that monolithic governance has structurally failed and that the protocol's economic role is becoming increasingly sophisticated? The proposal is more political-economy than technical.
Core technical contributions
The plan's technical contributions are genuinely thinner than typical protocol papers, which is one of its primary weaknesses. The SubDAO structure (Section 2 of the consolidated plan) specifies that MakerDAO splits into a small number of focused SubDAOs, each with its own governance, treasury, and operational scope. Two types are specified: SubDAOs focused on protocol operations and risk management, and a second category focused on growing specific verticals like RWA, ecosystem development, or yield strategies. Each SubDAO has its own governance token (SubDAO tokens) which interacts with the parent governance token (SKY) via a defined economic relationship. The exact mechanism — how SubDAO governance interacts with parent governance, how SubDAO tokens accrue value, how risk is delegated — is specified at high level but not at contract or parameter detail. This is where the plan most diverges from typical protocol whitepapers: most of the implementation detail was left to be worked out by the SubDAO teams themselves, post-formation. The token migration (USDS and SKY, Sections 4-5) is more specified. USDS launches as a new stablecoin contract with a 1:1 migration path from DAI, cleaner reserve composition (more T-bills, less USDC), and a yield-sharing mechanism (Sky Savings Rate) that distributes a fraction of protocol revenue to USDS holders directly. SKY launches at a 1:24,000 ratio to MKR, which is purely cosmetic (preserving total economic exposure) but enables more granular governance voting and fits better with SubDAO token economics. The RWA-expansion section is a strategic roadmap rather than a mechanism specification: the plan identifies tokenised T-bills, real-estate, and credit assets as target categories and specifies governance milestones for the expansion, without going into per-asset mechanism detail. The Endgame Stages framework (Section 7) specifies phasing: Pregame (ongoing operations), Early Game (SubDAO formation), Mid Game (RWA expansion), and Endgame (full federation). Each stage has milestone gates that must be met before advancing.
Methodology and rigor
The Endgame Plan is the least-rigorous document in this review series, and that is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight. The plan is explicitly a strategic vision and political-economy proposal, not a technical specification. Christensen writes from a management-consultant register — slide-deck-style frameworks, four-quadrant matrices, named stages — that is materially different from the protocol-engineering register of papers like Aave V3 or Pendle V2. There are no theorems, no proofs, no parameter tables, and very little formal reasoning. The economic analysis of the proposed SubDAO structure is informal: Christensen argues that subsidiarity will improve governance throughput, but does not model what happens when SubDAOs disagree, when SubDAO governance is captured, or when SubDAO economics diverge from parent-DAO economics. The token migration mechanics are specified at sufficient detail to implement, but the rationale for the specific 1:24,000 SKY conversion ratio is essentially aesthetic. The RWA expansion plan is a list of target sectors without mechanism design. The methodology critique is partly unfair — the document is a governance vision, not a research paper — but partly fair: a proposal of this scale, affecting a top-five DeFi protocol with $7B+ in circulating stablecoin, would benefit from much more rigorous analysis than it received. Subsequent execution has filled in many of the gaps, but the gaps were genuinely large at publication. From a 2026 vantage point, the plan's biggest methodological weakness is the AI-coordination layer (Section 8), which proposes that SubDAOs eventually coordinate via standardised AI agents. The proposal is speculative — Christensen acknowledges this — but it has subsequently received serious uptake by parts of the Maker community, and the lack of grounding in actual AI capability has produced governance proposals that DI views as premature.
Strengths
The plan's strongest contribution is the strategic correctness of its diagnosis. Christensen's analysis that DAI's USDC dependency was unsustainable, that monolithic DAO governance was structurally limited, and that RWA expansion was necessary for long-term protocol viability has been substantially validated by subsequent events. The August 2022 Tornado Cash sanctions, the March 2023 USDC depeg, the 2023-25 RWA market expansion (BlackRock BUIDL, Ondo USDY, Maple Compass), and the broader institutional adoption of tokenised treasuries all support the strategic thesis. Maker that did not pursue this strategy would, in DI's view, be substantially worse off in 2026 than the Maker that did. Second, the SubDAO concept — while implemented messily — has produced meaningful operational improvements. Spark Protocol (effectively the Maker-aligned lending SubDAO) has captured several billion dollars in deposits and operates with much higher governance throughput than parent Maker did. RWA-focused sub-organisations have closed deals with traditional finance counterparties that monolithic Maker would have struggled to execute. Third, the USDS migration has proceeded substantially: by April 2026 USDS supply exceeds $9B, with DAI partially deprecated and partially maintained as a legacy bridge. The Sky Savings Rate has provided a reliable yield mechanism that has competed with Treasury-bill-backed alternatives. Fourth, the SKY token migration, while controversial, has resulted in a top-30 governance token with a more functional market than MKR achieved at peak, and the migration completed without major incident. Fifth, the RWA expansion has been substantially executed: by April 2026 Maker holds approximately $3.5B in tokenised RWA exposure, generating roughly $250M in annual revenue at current rates, which has materially supported protocol profitability and SKY price. Sixth, Christensen's willingness to commit publicly to a multi-year transformation has produced governance accountability that has, on balance, supported execution; the public commitment made it harder for the project to drift back to status-quo behaviour.
Weaknesses and limitations
The plan has substantial weaknesses, both as a document and in execution. First, the lack of mechanism specification has produced execution complexity and governance disputes that more rigorous specification would have avoided. The exact economic relationship between SKY and SubDAO tokens has been litigated in governance multiple times, with outcomes that vary across SubDAOs in ways the plan does not anticipate. Second, the SubDAO formation process has been slower and more contentious than the plan implies. Of the 6-8 SubDAOs originally envisioned, only 3 are operational as of April 2026, and several promised SubDAOs have been delayed indefinitely. Third, the USDS migration has not been fully completed. DAI remains in circulation alongside USDS, with roughly 40% of legacy DAI not yet migrated as of April 2026. The dual-stablecoin period has created user confusion and integration overhead for downstream protocols (lending markets, DEXs) that have to support both. Fourth, the SKY tokenomics have produced governance-distribution outcomes that differ materially from MKR. Several large early MKR holders did not migrate in full, producing a residual MKR market with reduced governance utility but persistent existence — a structural overhang that the plan did not anticipate. Fifth, the AI-coordination thesis remains speculative and has produced governance proposals that DI views as premature: AI-agent-led SubDAO governance has been proposed multiple times in 2024-25 but has not been implemented in any meaningful form, and the discussion of it has consumed governance bandwidth without delivering value. Sixth, the centralisation of RWA exposure in a small number of counterparties (BlockTower, Monetalis, Ondo) creates concentration risk that the plan acknowledges only obliquely. A failure of any one of these counterparties would create meaningful protocol-level risk that the plan does not analyse. Seventh, Christensen's personal influence over the plan has produced both governance backlash (with significant 'Pure Maker' factions arguing for return to a simpler architecture) and execution risk (the plan is partly dependent on Christensen's continued involvement in ways that are not sustainable). Eighth, the free-floating algorithmic-stablecoin contingency — Pure Maker as a collateralised stablecoin backed only by ETH and decentralised assets — has not been seriously progressed, leaving the plan's promised censorship-resistance dimension under-delivered.
Subsequent influence
The Endgame Plan has had outsized influence on DAO design discourse, partly because its scale and ambition forced other DAO leaders to articulate their positions. Compound's governance-restructure discussions (2023-24), Aave's Risk DAO sub-governance evolution, and Optimism's Citizens-House/Token-House split all reference Endgame-Plan-style framing in their justifications. The SubDAO concept has been imitated, with mixed success: Frax launched a SubDAO-style restructure in 2024 that has been implemented more cleanly than Maker's, while several smaller DAOs have attempted SubDAO formation with limited success. The DAI-to-USDS migration approach has informed how other protocols think about token-version transitions: Compound's COMP-to-COMP-X discussion (still ongoing in 2026), Synthetix's V3 token transition, and several smaller protocol token migrations have studied the Maker case carefully. The RWA expansion has had the largest market-level influence: by validating that a top-tier DeFi protocol could hold billions in tokenised treasuries, Maker effectively legitimised institutional RWA tokenisation and seeded the BlackRock BUIDL / Ondo USDY / Franklin BENJI ecosystem that has come to dominate the on-chain Treasury market. The Endgame Plan is the proximate cause of the post-2022 RWA wave in DeFi. The AI-coordination thesis has had less concrete influence but has shaped DAO-research discourse: the question of how AI agents might participate in governance is now an active research area, with several research papers explicitly building on Christensen's framing.
How it holds up in 2026
The Endgame Plan has held up better as strategic vision than as execution roadmap. Three years post-publication, Maker — now usually called Sky — is materially different from what it was in 2022: USDS is the primary stablecoin, SKY is the primary governance token, three SubDAOs are operational, $3.5B in RWA exposure is generating meaningful revenue, and the protocol holds a top-five position in the stablecoin and lending categories combined. This is roughly the trajectory the plan envisioned, achieved on roughly the timeline the plan proposed (the plan estimated 'several years' for Endgame completion; we are three years in with substantial completion). On the other side: the execution has been visibly messier than the proposal implies, governance backlash has been persistent, and several key elements (full DAI migration, free-floating algorithmic backstop, AI coordination) remain incomplete or unaddressed. The plan's long-term vision of Maker as a multi-asset financial infrastructure provider — analogous to a decentralised bank or asset manager — is partly realised but has not yet been validated at scale. The competitive landscape has evolved in ways the plan did not anticipate: Ethena's USDe demonstrated that algorithmic stablecoins could scale rapidly with novel collateral models, BlackRock's BUIDL demonstrated that traditional finance could enter the on-chain Treasury market directly without DeFi-protocol intermediation, and Spark Protocol's success has put Maker's lending-market relationship in flux. By April 2026, the strategic question facing Sky is whether the SubDAO federation can continue to capture value from the protocol's expanded scope, or whether the federation will fragment into competing entities that erode the parent token's value. DI's holistic assessment: a strategically correct vision document with execution-level weaknesses, validated by partial implementation, with material long-term uncertainties remaining. A seven on importance, with a footnote that the next two-three years will determine whether the seven becomes an eight or a five.
Strengths
- Strategic diagnosis (USDC dependency, governance scaling, RWA expansion) substantially correct
- USDS migration successfully executed; over $9B in supply by April 2026
- SubDAO concept produced meaningful operational improvements at Spark and RWA verticals
- $3.5B RWA exposure generating ~$250M annual revenue, materially supporting protocol profitability
- SKY token migration completed without major incident; functional governance token market
- Public commitment to multi-year transformation produced execution accountability
Weaknesses
- Mechanism specification is thin — execution details left to be worked out post-formation
- Only 3 of 6-8 envisioned SubDAOs operational by April 2026; several delayed indefinitely
- DAI not fully migrated; ~40% of legacy DAI remains, creating dual-stablecoin overhead
- AI-coordination thesis remains speculative and has consumed governance bandwidth without delivery
- RWA counterparty concentration (BlockTower, Monetalis, Ondo) creates risks not analysed
- Free-floating algorithmic backstop (Pure Maker) under-delivered, weakening censorship-resistance claim
Key contributions
- SubDAO restructure: federation of focused sub-organisations replacing monolithic Maker DAO governance
- USDS stablecoin migration: new stablecoin replacing DAI with cleaner reserve composition and yield-sharing mechanics
- SKY governance token migration: 1 MKR : 24,000 SKY conversion, cleaner tokenomics for sub-governance
- RWA collateral expansion: target of $5-10B in tokenised treasuries, real-estate, and credit assets
- Endgame Stages: explicit phasing (Pregame, Early Game, Mid Game, Endgame) with milestone gates
- AI-coordination layer (theoretical): proposal that SubDAOs eventually coordinate via standardised AI agents
- Free-floating algorithmic-stablecoin contingency: Pure-Maker collateral as ultimate decentralised backstop
TL;DR
The Endgame Plan is DeFi's most ambitious DAO-restructuring proposal: SubDAOs, USDS/SKY migration, RWA expansion. Strategically correct, executed unevenly, partially complete by April 2026. The next 2-3 years will determine whether the vision delivers fully or fragments.
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Sources
External references gathered from the body of this brief. Last reviewed 2026-05-03.