The Solana decentralized ecosystem (DeFi) is growing: Sky—formerly known as MakerDAO—has put its new stablecoin on the crypto network. 

According to Sky, the token, USDS, will be the DeFi-native stablecoin on Solana. 

Sky’s USDS stablecoin was launched in September. Sky runs on Ethereum and is one of the oldest DeFi projects in the space. USDS replaced DAI, the long-running Ethereum stablecoin; DAI holders were able to upgrade to USDS as of September.

“As the first major DeFi-native stablecoin on Solana, USDS unlocks new opportunities for lending, borrowing and trading across the ecosystem's top DeFi platforms,” the project said on X (formerly Twitter). 

Rune Christensen, co-founder of Sky, told Decrypt that the move “marks the beginning of a new multi-chain era for USDS.”

“Solana’s broad consumer adoption and highly active community align perfectly with Sky’s mission to make DeFi accessible to more people,” he said. 

Solana is a fast-growing crypto ecosystem, especially in the DeFi space: DeFiLlama data shows that it has $8.2 billion locked into its DeFi apps—the second-largest amount of value of all major blockchains, after Ethereum. 

Solana competes with Ethereum by being a faster and cheaper network for transacting tokens and interacting with decentralized apps (dapps).

Decentralized finance—or DeFi—refers to projects in the crypto space that want to replace traditional financial services like borrowing and lending. But apps released in the sphere are typically experimental and therefore prone to hacks and exploits, as well as price crashes.

Sky rebranded from MakerDAO in September and allows users to borrow and lend cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins are a digital asset that are pegged to another asset, usually the U.S. dollar. Traders in the space can use them to enter and exit crypto trades quickly without having to use banks.

Edited by Andrew Hayward