DeFi Giant MakerDAO Rejects $100M Loan to Cogent Bank

The MakerDAO community rebuffed state-chartered Cogent Bank’s proposal to borrow $100 million from the decentralized lending platform Maker, the protocol’s governance site showed on Monday.

Some 73% of the voters rejected the plan.

MakerDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that manages the lending platform Maker through proposals and votes. Maker issues the $5 billion stablecoin DAI, backing its value by collateralized digital assets from borrowers and, increasingly, by real-world assets (RWA) such as liabilities from traditional financial institutions such as banks.

Cogent Bank, a Florida-based, state-chartered bank with more than $1 billion in total assets, proposed borrowing up to $100 million in DAI stablecoin from Maker and would have used the funds to extend loans to its corporate and industrial clients, according to the MIP-95 proposal posted on Maker’s governance forum.

The rejection follows less than a year after Maker approved a similarly structured loan to Huntingdon Valley Bank in August, and represents a blowback to Maker’s aspiration to onboard more traditional players to its platform.

Before the vote concluded, MakerDAO voter London Business School Blockchain, noted concerns that unlike "prior real-world asset deals, there is no way to quickly liquidate the loan portfolio should Maker wish to reduce its exposure to the underlying assets.” Still, London Business School Blockchain voted in favor of the proposal.

Read more: MakerDAO Members Support Founder's 'Endgame' Plan to Break Up into MetaDAOs, $2.1B of Transfers