Grayscale Continues Expansion Spree with MakerDAO (MKR) Trust

• Grayscale has launched a MakerDAO (MKR) Trust.
• The single-asset fund will be available to select investors.
• MakerDAO’s MKR has surged in response to the news.

With over 20 funds on offer, including recently converted Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs, boasting an asset under management of over $25 billion, Grayscale is the world’s largest crypto fund manager. Despite its success, however, the firm is not resting on its oars as it continues to expand its offerings.

In the latest instance, the firm has expanded its suite of offerings with a fund to grant investors exposure to MKR, the governance token of MakerDAO, a leading decentralized lending platform and the entity behind DAI, the third largest crypto stablecoin and the largest decentralized stablecoin. The new fund comes just after the firm announced Trusts for SUI and Bittensor (TAO) on August 7.

Grayscale Launches MakerDAO (MKR) Trust

Grayscale has expanded its product suite yet again. On Tuesday, August 13, Grayscale announced the launch of a MakerDAO Trust to grant investors exposure to MKR.

Grayscale detailed that the fund is open to eligible individual and accredited institutional investors. At the same time, the MakerDAO Trust would operate like other single-asset Grayscale funds, which means it would be a closed-ended fund. 

As a closed-ended fund, the MakerDAO Trust would not allow direct withdrawals, making an exit from the fund only possible through share sales. As such, the value of the fund’s shares may differ from MKR’s value, trading at a premium when demand is high and at a discount should demand drop.

A Proxy to Bet on MakerDAO’s Growth

Commenting on the development, Grayscale Head of Product and Research Rayhaneh Sharif Askary suggested that investors would be able to benefit from the anticipated growth of MakerDAO.

"The launch of the Grayscale MakerDAO Trust allows investors to experience the growth of the entire MakerDAO ecosystem, aiming to remove DeFi's dependency on traditional finance infrastructure by providing a permissionless, decentralized, and open stablecoin system," he asserted.

The Grayscale fund comes as the project undergoes restructuring in line with MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen’s Endgame manifesto , which aims to see the project become more resilient and censorship-resistant by diversifying DAI’s backing and splitting into smaller units called SubDAOs. The roadmap would eventually also see MakerDAO move to a new blockchain and launch upgraded versions of the MKR and DAI tokens.

MKR has reacted positively to Grayscale’s fund announcement, trading about 7% higher over the past 24 hours at $2,130, according to CoinMarketCap data at the time of writing.