MakerDAO project
A former technical partner for the MakerDAO project, Nikolai Mushegian, recently donated 3,200 MKR tokens to his alma mater which is Carnegie Mellon University or CMU. Currently, 3,200 MKR tokens have a worth of $1.38 million.
As pointed out by Mushegian, the purpose of the donation made by him was to set up a research program that can use for decentralized finance (Defi) protocols as well as decentralized applications (dapps).
These funds will utilize for sponsoring the research of Masters and Ph.D. students. It expected that this research agenda and the concrete plan of action would be going to get published over the next few weeks.
On asking Mushegian about the motive behind this donation, he said, he was very concerned about the increasing rent-seeking behavior from some of the big players in this space. He also added that the existing banks and tech giants were also of no help.
Mushegian expressed his belief according to which the Defi systems would eventually replace the financial backbone of the economy as soon as they start to make progress and get recognition. To make his point more valid, he also gave out an example. He said that if people think someone eating your lunch was terrible, then imagine how worse it would be if you discovered about generalized uni swap.
He also added that such types of systems belonged in the public domain.
To that end, Mushegian, a former software engineer at Google, has also “informally committed” another 6,800 MKR tokens (currently worth nearly $3 million) to be donated to CMU “over the next 1-3 years.” One MKR token presently priced at around $432.
There was information released from the official website of Mushegian, where he specified and gave out the core mechanics of the original contract system spec for the Dai stablecoin system.
He said that since Dai has completed, it formally specified with substantial proof coverage. Dai has completed, formally defined with valuable proof coverage, which is fully documented, diagrammed, and deployed.