Sky (formerly Maker) Announces USDS Debut on Solana Blockchain

Sky, the DeFi lending protocol formerly known as Maker, has deployed its USDS stablecoin on the Solana blockchain.

According to the official announcement, Sky said the launch positions USDS as “the first major DeFi-native stablecoin on Solana”, providing new borrowing, lending and trading capabilities across the blockchain’s leading DeFi platforms.

“Today’s launch marks the first step in Sky’s strategy to increase Solana’s DeFi liquidity and TVL. Pending governance approval, future phases will deploy SkyLink to improve native cross-chain support for USDS and sUSDS. Sky’s vision aligns with Solana’s robust ecosystem of consumer applications, composability and high-performance technology.

The update on X revealed that the USDS integration on Solana is powered by Wormhole’s Native Token Transfer (NTT), which ensures that the stablecoin is natively multi-chain. This is available on Solana and Ethereum without the need for wrapped tokens. It also facilitates the bridge between Sky’s governance token, SKY, and the Solana network.

As part of the launch, Sky is rewarding early adopters, including users and liquidity providers who engage with USDS on four key Solana DeFi platforms.

Additionally, Kamino Finance users can access 200,000 USDS weekly rewards for providing liquidity with USDC/USDS, and an additional 100,000 USDS per week for those providing the stablecoin. Meanwhile, Drift Protocol will reward stablecoin providers with 100,000 USDS every week, and Save Finance will provide 400,000 USDS in monthly rewards to those providing the dollar-pegged asset.

USDS is currently the third largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with a value of $5.24 billion.

As part of its Endgame overhaul, Maker was rebranded as Sky in August this year. Decentralized stablecoin DAI and governance token MKR have been renamed USDS and SKY, respectively. According to co-founder Rune Christensen, the main goal of the rebranding was to capture its role in the “next evolution of DeFi.”