Grayscale is rolling out a new single-asset fund for MakerDAO's governance token.
The new closed-end fund will be accessible to eligible individual and institutional accredited investors.

Grayscale, the asset manager company behind bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange traded-funds (ETFs) and other crypto investment funds, introduced Tuesday a new fund that invests in the governance token of decentralized lending platform MakerDAO (MKR).

MKR advanced over 5% in an hour following the news, hitting $2,100. The token is up nearly 8% over the past 24 hours, outperforming the mostly flat broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index.

The Grayscale MakerDAO Trust is accessible to eligible individual and institutional accredited investors, and has the same structure as the firm's other single-asset trusts, according to a press release. This means that it's a closed-end fund where direct withdrawals are not possible, which could lead to price deviations between the fund's share on secondary markets and the underlying asset.

Maker is one of the largest protocols in the decentralized finance (DeFi) led by a community of token holders, or decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Those who hold MKR tokens can participate in decision-making and vote on proposals. The protocol manages over $7 billion of crypto and real-world assets (RWA) including U.S. Treasuries and issues the third largest stablecoin on the market, the $5 billion DAI.

The protocol is currently undergoing a major revamp called "End Game" coined by founder Rune Christensen, which includes the issuance of upgraded versions of MKR and DAI.

The offering follows Grayscale's newly launched single-asset funds for decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) project Bittensor's (TAO) token and layer-1 blockchain Sui (SUI) last week. The company also opened a decentralized AI-focused fund that invests in a basket of cryptocurrencies including near (NEAR), render (RNDR) and filecoin (FIL), nearly a month ago.

UPDATE (Aug. 13, 14:00 UTC time): Adds MKR price action following the announcement.

Grayscale Bitcoin ETF Funds MakerDAO MKR DeFi

Krisztian Sandor

Krisztian Sandor recently graduated from NYU's business and economic reporter program as a Fulbright fellow and worked with Reuters and Forbes previously. Originally from Budapest, Hungary, he is now based in New York. He holds BTC and ETH.