MakerDAO Introduces New Collateral Interface

MakerDAO has introduced a new CDP Portal, which serves as a simplified and streamlined interface that allows users to generate their own collateralized Dai stablecoins. The news was announced in a recent Medium post that details the portal’s many features.

Collateralization on MakerDAO

The CDP Portal allows individuals to lock up their Ethereum tokens in MakerDAO’s smart contracts. In return, users can generate and receive Dai tokens, which have a stable value. This lets users obtain tokens with a consistent price, but also allows them to retain control over their collateralized tokens.

This process does, however, come with a cost. Your collateralized ETH must be worth at least 150% of the value of the Dai that you generate. In order to keep the price of Dai stable, MakerDAO will sell the excess collateral as the price fluctuates. (Other minor costs are also detailed on the CDP Portal’s landing page.)

What Is the CDP Portal?

Although MakerDAO’s old interface provides functions similar to those of the CDP Portal, the new portal is much easier to understand and use. MakerDAO has spent the past several months redesigning the interface and testing it with users.

The portal serves as a frontend to MakerDAO’s collateralization contracts. Since the platform runs on a public blockchain, MakerDAO is also encouraging independent developers to create their own custom frontends.

Streamlining the Collateralization Process

The CDP Portal will make the collateralization process much faster. As a recent tweet from MakerDAO explains, the new portal “[takes] the number of clicks to open a CDP from 8 down to 2-3.”

Several changes make this possible. Notably, many features have been combined: a proxy contract performs several basic transactions automatically. This means that users can open their CDP, lock in collateral, and generate Dai all at once.

The user interface has also received a number of changes: apart from a new look, it also provides relevant information to users. This is accomplished via warnings about unsafe choices and a dashboard that lists various possible actions.

The CDP Portal also adds support for two hardware wallets (Ledger Nano S and Trezor), and will continue to support the Metamask and Parity software wallets.

Suggested Reading : Learn more about the best altcoin wallets in 2018.

What Are the Implications?

Since MakerDAO’s collateralized and issued assets are both cryptocurrencies, the platform provides a decentralized alternative to other stablecoins. For example, it eliminates the need for a centralized reserve, such as the one used by Tether.

Although MakerDAO’s CDP Portal accepts only ETH tokens at the moment, it will eventually allow users to deposit multiple tokens as collateral. As such, the efforts of MakerDAO could bring stability to many different coinholders in the future.