MakerDAO Lowers Fees, Raises Debt Ceiling, Expands DAI Liquidity, and Launches Ethena Stablecoin Markets

Daily Top Performer — Jito (JTO)

Last Friday, the February PCE price index indicated a slight inflation deceleration. Following the data release, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell emphasised the central bank's cautious approach towards interest rate cuts, as the inflation print aligns with the central bank’s expectation. The broader cryptocurrency market was up, with Bitcoin and Ether rising by 1.18% and 2.18% in the past 24 hours.

Today’s outperformer is JTO, which jumped 31.0% after enhancing DeFi bridging efficiency with deBridge and Jito Labs Bundles for Solana Asset Trading.

Jito (JTO), founded in 2021, is a DeFi platform built on the Solana blockchain. It incorporates a liquid staking protocol that leverages staking and MEV strategies, enabling users to earn returns by temporarily locking their cryptocurrency tokens. deBridge integrates Jito Labs' Bundles to enhance efficiency in bridging Solana's long-tail and meme coins, allowing for atomic, cross-chain trades with optimised pricing. This addresses previous trading limitations for volatile assets by removing transaction size restrictions. The solution enables seamless and efficient trading across chains, improving the DeFi ecosystem's accessibility and liquidity. Jito Labs provides the infrastructure to support these advancements, contributing to the scalability and efficiency of Solana's DeFi transactions.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of JTOUSDT Perp and JTO/USDT Spot!

Talk of the Town

MakerDAO has passed an executive proposal to adjust its lending protocol, including reducing stability fees by two percentage points for assets like ETH, stETH, BTC, and WBTC and raising SparkLend’s debt ceiling to $2.5 billion from $1 billion. Additionally, the proposal includes allocating $100 million DAI to liquidity pools on Morpho through Spark, lowering DAI’s savings rate to 13% from 15%, and other changes. This decision follows a previous vote to increase fees by 140% to manage a DAI demand spike. The adjustments aim to adapt to market dynamics and support MakerDAO's strategic objectives, including the introduction of a new DAI market with access to Ethena’s USDe and sUSDe stablecoins.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of MKRUSDT Perp and MKR/USDT Spot!

Macro Events to Watch:

In February 2024, the ISM Manufacturing PMI in the United States dropped to 47.8, marking a decrease from 49.1 the previous month and falling below the anticipated 49.5. This signifies the 16th consecutive decline in manufacturing activity, contradicting earlier expectations of improvement. New orders entered contraction territory, leading to a reduction in production levels, despite a lesser decline in the backlog of orders. Prices for certain items like transportation equipment and electronics rose slightly for the second month, while a downturn in consumer demand and reduced capacity needs pushed employment levels down for the fifth consecutive month.

Airdrop Spotlight

April will see the launch of several highly anticipated airdrops, including Ethena, Wormhole, and Parcl, among others, with May expected to be even more eventful. A comprehensive list excluding well-known ones like zkSync is available for those interested in recent airdrops. The list features active airdrops from both mainnet projects, such as Elixir, Scroll, and Aptos 2, and testnet or unfunded projects, like Nyan Heroes and AnimeCoin, offering a wide range of participant opportunities.