Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has unloaded a portion of his stash of MakerDAO (MKR) tokens. This intriguing sell-off comes in the wake of the MakerDAO founder’s praise of Solana, a decentralised blockchain application platform. The move marked a remarkable departure for Buterin, who hasn’t touched this particular stack of cryptocurrency in two years.
Buterin offloaded about 500 MKR tokens, valued roughly around $581,000 at the time of transaction. Utilizing CoSwap, a decentralized exchange, Buterin traded his MakerDAO assets for 350 ETH (Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency). All of the newly acquired ETH have been directed towards an address associated with Buterin, now swelling with over $1 million in cryptocurrency assets which includes a variety of ERC-20 tokens and 415.76 ETH.
A keen early investor in MakerDAO – a decentralized lending platform fuelling the popular stablecoin DAI – Buterin’s sudden move to diminish his MKR holdings raises eyebrows and sparks speculation. Although the reasons for Buterin’s sudden sell-off are unclear, it coincidentally followed MakerDAO founder Rune’s positive statements about Solana. Rune stirred the pot by suggesting that leveraging Solana’s code base for MakerDAO’s blockchain projects holds great promise. This kind of endorsement is likely unsettling to Ethereum loyalists, given MakerDAO’s status as a significant player in the Ethereum ecosystem. Following this surprising praise, speculations are that the endorsement may have led to Buterin’s unexpected MKR sell-off.