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CoinDesk Podcast Network - LTB!: How MakerDAO’s Stablecoin Survived the Crash, Smart Contract Bugs and Full Decentralization

In the aftermath of the so-called "Black Thursday" crash from several weeks ago, MakerDAO's "DAI" ethereum backed dollar pegged stablecoin came untethered and was, for a time at least, functionally insolvent. In the aftermath, holders of the MKR token which allows holders to participate in governance decisions opted to do a couple of things, including adding the centralized stablecoin USDC to the list of acceptable collateral, which drew both condemnations mostly around centralized risk being added to the system and praise for making the system more robust against sudden ETH collateral price crashes.

And now most recently, the Maker Foundation which had held some centralized control over the protocol completed their long-planned exit with all authorities now transferred to the holders of MKR tokens, removing both a point of control which had been used as a safety check and a point of risk in that centralized control can be co-opted and used to disrupt a system as we've seen in other examples.

On today's show we're digging into:

  • What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?
  • How does decentralized finance differ from traditional banking?
  • Fractional reserve vs over-collateralized loans 
  • Liberty Dollars’s missing collateral and USDC’s risky name
  • MakerDAO, DAI dollar-pegged stablecoins and how this DeFi stablecoin actually works
  • SDAI (Single Collateral DAI) vs. DAI (Multi Collateral DAI)
  • Smart contract ‘vaults’
  • Lending money to yourself: 150%, 300%, insurance and auctions
  • What happened on ‘Black Thursday’ as the price of Ether dropped more than 50%
  • What happened when transaction fees went through the roof
  • A bug in the collateral auction smart contract
  • A surprising crash: as the system became functionally insolvent the price of the dollar pegged stablecoin actually went up.
  • Oasis.app vaults are transparent, take a look!
  • Loaning yourself money using your ether (at interest)
  • How MakerDAO’s approach differs from SALT Lending
  • The other half of the DAI system: saving vault smart contracts
  • DAI Saving Rate (DSR) and the new certificate of deposit
  • The reward for using MKR tokens to administer a good system
  • Can savings vaults be liquidated?
  • Smart contract risks, consensus risks, systemic risks and response time risks
  • Sponsors: eToro.com and Purse.io
  • What specifically went wrong with the auction smart contracts?
  • Recapitalizing the system by diluting MKR governance stakeholders
  • Even with bugs, market mechanisms to fill the solvency hole seemed to work better than government bailout equivalents.
  • Completing the transition from foundation-overseen to full tokenized governance.
  • Decentralization transition - A necessary step or a natural one?
  • Single collateral vs. Multi-collateral
  • Why would a decentralized stablecoin want to allow a centralized stablecoin for collateral?
  • External political risks vs. internal technological risks
  • “Life finds a way” and DeFi’s natural circuit breakers (also Mt.GOX)
  • Whats the point of putting USDC in to get DAI out?
  • How does DeFi insurance work?
  • A modular ecosystem 
  • How DeFi and traditional finance are similar
  • DeFi vs. 2nd layer protocols

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More or Less: Behind the Stats - The Risk

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, puts the risks of Covid-19 into perspective. He found that the proportion of people who get infected by coronavirus, who then go on to die increases with age, and the trend matches almost exactly how our background mortality risk also goes up. Catching the disease could be like packing a year?s worth of risk into a couple of weeks.

(Mathematician and Risk guru, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter at the University of Cambridge. Credit: In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)

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Curious City - How To Safely Enjoy The Outdoors During COVID-19

Governor Pritzker’s “stay-at-home” order has left lots of Chicagoans wondering how ⁠they can safely enjoy the outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the city’s lakefront, adjacent parks, the 606 and Riverwalk have been closed because people were congregating in large groups, many natural areas in the region remain open.

So people can still go outside to walk, run or bike ride, as long as they remain six feet away from other individuals. If these rules are followed, experts say spending time outdoors can be really good for mental and physical well-being.

We've received at least 14 questions in the last couple weeks about the safety and logistics of outdoor recreation during the COVID19 crisis. In this episode, we talk about how you can safely be outside, and why it matters. 

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Curious City - How To Safely Enjoy The Outdoors During COVID-19

Governor Pritzker’s “stay-at-home” order has left lots of Chicagoans wondering how ⁠they can safely enjoy the outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the city’s lakefront, adjacent parks, the 606 and Riverwalk have been closed because people were congregating in large groups, many natural areas in the region remain open.

So people can still go outside to walk, run or bike ride, as long as they remain six feet away from other individuals. If these rules are followed, experts say spending time outdoors can be really good for mental and physical well-being.

We've received at least 14 questions in the last couple weeks about the safety and logistics of outdoor recreation during the COVID19 crisis. In this episode, we talk about how you can safely be outside, and why it matters. 

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CoinDesk Podcast Network - MICHAEL CASEY: Disruption, Money and a World of Change, Feat. Niall Ferguson

"...I think the right lesson to draw from all of this is that a global order needs to be based on a distributed operating system, not on a centralized architecture. And I think that applies not just in the realm of money but also across the board so that there is a greater capacity for local response than we currently have..."

CoinDesk's Michael Casey speaks with author, historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Niall Ferguson about our disrupted world, inevitable crisis and what it could mean for money. 

Album Art Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

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Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Protecting Democracy in a Pandemic

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Ian Bassin, former associated White House counsel from 2009-11 and co-founder of Protect Democracy for a look at the pain points, tensions, and glimmers of hope in how this constitutional democracy is handling the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19. 


In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern on why Justice Elena Kagan is voting with the conservatives, the unanimous decision in Comcast Corp. v. National Association of African American Media and what it means for future civil-rights cases, and the crisis unfolding in the immigration courts. Sign up for Slate Plus now to listen and support our show.


Podcast production by Sara Burningham.

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The Gist - Corona Stimulus Dissenters

Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence. Sign up now to listen and support our work.

On the Gist, Dr. Mark Siegel is at it again on Fox.

In the interview, Mike speaks with the Globe and Mail’s health reporter André Picard about the Canadian response to COVID-19. They discuss the ways it differs from the US response, how their government and media outlets are handling it, and lessons to be learned.

In the spiel, a corona quorum.

Email us at thegist@slate.com

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CrowdScience - Can science explain why I love shopping?

If you've ever felt the urge to shop till you drop, then you may already know about some of the clever ways retailers convince us to consume. From flash sales to so-called unbelievable offers, there are a whole range of techniques aimed at encouraging us to flash the cash. Listener Mo works in marketing, so knows more than most about the tricks of the trade - but he wants CrowdScience to investigate how neuroscience is being used to measure our behaviour and predict what we’ll buy. Marnie Chesterton finds out how brain scans are being used to discover which specific aspect of an advertisement a person is responding to, and then she hears how this information is being used by companies who want to sell us more stuff. But there's also evidence to suggest we have less control over these decisions than we think, and that computers are getting closer to detecting our intention before we're even aware of it ourselves. And this could have huge implications for the way we shop.

Presented by: Marnie Chesterton Produced by: Marijke Peters

(Photo:

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Consider This from NPR - Trump Signs Aid Package, Epicenter Is Now The U.S.

The $2 trillion economic recovery package is now law, as the number of COVID-19 cases in America approaches 100,000 and deaths near 1,500. A Johns Hopkins scientist weighs in on the idea of relaxing social distancing in select locations and the importance of more testing for coronavirus. And we explain when Americans could expect to receive federal stimulus money.

More links:
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour's episode, 'Family Friendly Crowd Pleasers: Three Things To Stream Your Whole Family Can Enjoy' on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on the NPR One App.

Check out Tarriona 'Tank' Ball's Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

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This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.

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