MakerDAO Constitution Would Fund Sustainability Efforts With 20K MKR Crypto Tokens From Reserves, Emissions

With “scientific sustainability” as a core principle, an early draft of the proposed Maker constitution would, if approved, play an active role in combating climate change by allocating $14 Million worth of MKR crypto tokens to its Scientific Sustainability Fund.

An early draft of MakerDAO’s proposed governance constitution would have the DAI crypto stablecoin issuer join the fight against climate change with 20,000 MKR crypto tokens (around $14 million) to finance sustainability campaigns through 2040.

Written by the cryptocurrency group’s founder Rune Christensen, the wide-ranging document identifies “scientific sustainability” as a core principle worth incorporating into Maker’s politics and operations. The proposed fund represents one of the strongest statements on climate change to come from a decentralized autonomous organization. “The details in relation to this fund will be revealed at a thereafter date,” stated a MakerDAO representative.

The climate call-out adds a new angle to MakerDAO’s hopes of disrupting the status quo financial infrastructure – as most every cryptocurrency project seeks to do. Reports by Christensen, who has long advocated for climate action, MakerDAO has a responsibility to act.

“ And once of the Maker Constitution the world is headed off a cliff with runaway greenhouse gas pollution pushing the biosphere past critical climate tipping points that will cause disasters for centuries to come. Immediate action is required,” the preliminary draft of the Maker constitution says.

Through the Scientific Sustainability Fund, MakerDAO will use MKR reserves and initial MKR crypto token emissions to finance awareness campaigns geared toward combating misinformation likewise as promoting “energy solutions that have proven, real life track records of achieving scalable decarbonization,” reports by the draft.

The constitution states that direct financing of coal energy won’t be be allowed.

The proposition has been viewed over 500 times, with 10 replies and 24 likes in the discussion forum since it was made 3 days ago. Most of the replies did not touch on the subject of climate change.

Nonetheless, a member of Maker’s governance core unit team, LongForWisdom, expressed his disapproval about Christensen’s usage of the words “immediate action is required.” LongForWisdom stated, “This is great in a speech, or if you’re attempting to convince someone to approve this as a proposition. In the end, though, it establish ambiguity that weakens the document as what is essentially part of a legal code.”

On Twitter platform, in response to the 20,000 MKR being allocated to fight climate change, Moneysupply.eth, a danger analyst and governance contributor for plenty of decentralized protocols, including MakerDAO, wrote, “So here’s a contrarian take: I am not convinced this specific initiative is the best path forward but [decentralized finance] desperately has to  start winning the battle for public opinion, the alternative is all of us in jail and the rest of the world buying their bug rations with cbdc [ monetary authority digital currencies].”

Despite the fact that Christenson published his climate-forward draft Constitution for MakerDAO this coming week, the concept of sustainability can be traced back to the first-ever public MKR vote in September 2018, a vote on guiding principles.

1 of the principles was sustainable finance. “ This implies that Maker will be biased towards, for instance, energy from renewable sources that provides a longstanding worldwide benefit, while being biased against financing fossil fuels and other assets that create longstanding danger, stated a Maker blog  post from August 2018 related to the 1st vote.

Furthermore, Christensen discussed climate change in “The Case for Clean Money” in 2021, well before this effort to codify the principles for the DAO.

“By tapping into the fundamental features of blockchain tech we can develop verifiable processes to secure all Maker collateral is in sustainable and climate-aligned assets that consider the longstanding impacts of financial activity on the environment,” Christensen wrote at the time.

The proposition indicated the draft of the Maker constitution is a work in progress and will continuously be updated and modified. To be able to be enacted, the proposition has to  move past the request for comments (RFC) phase, which is where the proposition sits as of now. The community is still reviewing the document and the writer is redrafting according to community comments.The RFC phase has a minimum duration of four months. Afterwards, Christensen can submit the proposition to the governance cycle where people can evaluate and vote on the proposal.

Rune Christensen did not return a request to comment by press time.

UPDATE: (Feb. 3, 2023, 20:23:23 UTC): Added comment from MakerDAO representative

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