MakerDAO is the decentralized autonomous organization behind the most widely recognized crypto-backed dollar-pegged stablecoin. Its history traces back to 2015 when the Dai stablecoin was first described, and the Maker protocol was launched in December 2017. Maker is powered by a system of smart contracts that manage collateralization, issuance, and balancing the value of Dai. Among the stablecoins, Dai is a unique combination of being meaningfully decentralized while remaining securely backed.
To vote on proposals about the Maker protocol improvement, participants use the MKR token. MKR is an Ethereum token of the ERC20 standard. It has no defined cap on the total supply because MKR is minted or burned to rebalance the value of Dai, so it always equals $1. Therefore, MKR holders are incentivized to make decisions that will improve the value of the protocol in the long term.