A governance proposal to rebrand decentralized finance lending and borrowing protocol Sky back to Maker was rejected in a vote dominated by a handful of whales. 

“Sky ecosystem governance has concluded an onchain vote to continue using the Sky brand as the primary backend protocol of the ecosystem,” the DeFi protocol team said in a post on X on Nov. 8.

It added that the decision “supports the ongoing transition from MKR to SKY and establishes Sky as the core brand.”

The governance vote opened on Nov. 4 and was recently concluded with the “Keep the Sky brand as the backend protocol brand” option prevailing — 79% in favor, pledging 63,874 MKR.

Only 18.5% voted to revive the Maker brand with a limited brand refresh, with 14,864 MKR tokens pledged. 

Four whales constituted most of the voting power with a combined 62,452 MKR, or 98% of the total, for sticking with Sky , while one whale pledged almost all of the MKR tokens for the other option to restore the Maker brand. 

In October, the Sky community considered reverting to its original Maker name after confusion and negative feedback over its August rebrand . At the time, protocol co-founder Rune Christensen proposed a discussion on the platform’s governance forum to “recenter the Maker brand.” 

Whale voters squash plan to rebrand DeFi protocol Sky back to Maker image 0

Sky governance whale voting. Source: Sky governance

Earlier this week, before the vote was concluded, Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer said that SKY had not yet had a chance to launch properly.

“It is not supported on any major exchanges, places like CoinGecko did not transition MKR market cap to SKY, and the rebrand timing was coincident with one large fund selling their MKR and a general market pullback,” he said, adding: 

“Going with SKY - I think there is a ton of value to be unearthed by following the Endgame roadmap, but there are things that should be altered and lessons learned.”

Related: Sky co-founder proposes no new emissions for core token

Since the rebrand in late August, MKR prices tanked almost 50%, bottoming out at $1,100 on Nov. 6. Since then it has bounced back, topping $1,600 in late trading on Nov. 7 before falling to $1,476 at the time of writing.

The rebound followed a “strictly deflationary tokenomics” proposal from Christensen on Nov. 4 to halt token emissions and decrease total supply. 

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