The Dai Stablecoin System

Direct answer

The 2017 paper describes Dai as a liability minted against overcollateralised vaults, kept near a dollar target by a fee, an auction, and an emergency stop.

It is the reference in this library for crypto-collateralised stable value, as distinct from a token that claims a bank balance. It is not a quote of today's system.

Why it is in the corpus

• The design says where the dollar claim sits: on collateral and on liquidation, not on an unnamed account.
• A price is an input. Without an oracle and a keeper, the paper's auction does not run.

Where to read

• Official source — MakerDAO white paper
• Blockchain Lab study, the canonical readingOriginal commentary. Not a transcription of the paper.

Metadata and commentary only.

Full text

Full text is not published on this page. Public availability is not a licence to republish a document. Blockchain Lab has not recorded a licence that permits an HTML transcription, a training set, or a retrieval corpus of the paper. Text on this page is Blockchain Lab's own wording, or a pointer to a study that is also Blockchain Lab's wording.

Claims and assumptions

Blockchain Lab's reading of what the document is doing. Not a quotation and not the source text.

• A vault locks collateral and mints a limited debt.
• If the ratio breaks, the position is auctioned.
• Emergency shutdown is part of the design, not an embarrassment added later.

Assumptions

• Collateral can be sold when it needs to be.
• The price feed is available and not the attacker.

What changed

Multi-collateral Dai and later modules are not the 2017 single-collateral text. The study names the version. This page does not report a peg, a yield, or solvency.

Relationships

• Canonical readingMaker study
• ProposesStablecoin
• Depends onOracle
• Different designTerra, a failure case
• CompareCollateral and algorithmic designs

Construct with this

A pattern link for people designing a system. It is not a claim that this paper is a product specification, and it is not permission to copy anyone’s code.

• Settlement blueprint — collateral, not a promise

Cite this record

These citations point at the source document. They are not a licence to copy it.

MakerDAO (2017). The Dai Stablecoin System. MakerDAO. https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/

@techreport{makerdai2017,
  title = {The Dai Stablecoin System},
  author = {MakerDAO},
  year = {2017},
  institution = {MakerDAO},
  url = {https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/},
  note = {Rights status: Official external source only. Blockchain Lab record: https://blockchainlab.com/research/corpus/papers/maker-dai}
}

TY  - RPRT
TI  - The Dai Stablecoin System
AU  - MakerDAO
PY  - 2017
PB  - MakerDAO
UR  - https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/
N1  - Rights status: Official external source only
ER  -

[
  {
    "type": "report",
    "id": "BLC-PAPER-0006",
    "title": "The Dai Stablecoin System",
    "author": [
      {
        "literal": "MakerDAO"
      }
    ],
    "issued": {
      "date-parts": [
        [
          2017
        ]
      ]
    },
    "publisher": "MakerDAO",
    "URL": "https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/",
    "note": "Rights status: Official external source only. Not a licence to republish the paper."
  }
]

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Rights record

Source status

Official source

Use status

Metadata and commentary only.

Rights

Official external source only

Training and retrieval

Not permitted from this site. There is no rights-cleared full text to retrieve or to train on.

Rights and licensing · Corrections

Useful next step

• Blockchain Canon
• Knowledge graph
• Build a venture, separately from the paper