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On August 7, S&P Global Ratings issued its first-ever credit rating for a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, assigning Sky Protocol — formerly MakerDAO — a B-. The assessment used S&P’s global scale, placing Sky’s risk profile alongside that of traditional lenders worldwide rather than under a bespoke DeFi framework.
“Sky Protocol approached us to assign a credit rating on our global scale,” Andrew O’Neill, Managing Director and Analytical Lead for Digital Assets at S&P Global, told Blockstories. “We felt it was important to benchmark Sky against global peers. That gives market participants a common frame of reference.”
Operating on Ethereum, Sky is one of the largest decentralized lending platforms and the issuer of the USDS and DAI stablecoins. It offers crypto-collateralized loans in USDS and a savings product for USDS holders to earn yield, making it the fourth-largest stablecoin issuer globally.
Sky has also been an early mover in integrating real-world assets (RWAs) into DeFi reserves to diversify collateral and boost yields. In October 2022, it began allocating a significant share of DAI reserves to U.S. Treasuries and other RWAs. By March 2025, it had invested in BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and Janus Henderson’s tokenized Anemoy Treasury Fund via Centrifuge, the latter also carrying an S&P rating.
Applying the same methodology used for banks and corporates, S&P assessed Sky much like any other lender — focusing on the ability to meet obligations, resilience under stress, and adequacy of risk management. “It is a lender where the key risks include potential losses on assets, the risk of a liquidity run, insufficient capital to cover losses, and failures in risk management, all of which are conceptually very comparable to those faced by a traditional lender,” said O’Neill.
The speculative-grade rating reflects both market-wide uncertainties and protocol-specific weaknesses :
- Capital strength: A limited capital base that will take time, profitability, and retained earnings to strengthen.
- Depositor concentration: Reliance on a small number of large depositors, heightening liquidity risk in the event of sudden withdrawals.
- Governance structure: Centralized decision-making and key-person risk around founder Rune Christensen, plus the potential for strategic disruption from dissident voters.
- Regulatory clarity: Uncertainty around DAO governance and DeFi–TradFi interaction, with meaningful clarity likely years away.
For S&P, the Sky case may serve as a blueprint for rating other protocols where traditional risk concepts map cleanly, such as lending platforms.
“I can’t comment on the specific pipeline, but the DeFi market is increasingly looking to integrate with TradFi participants, and we see a role for ourselves in facilitating well-informed risk discussions,” O’Neill said.
L'avis de Blockstories
In traditional finance, a public credit rating signals that an entity has undergone an independent, objective and thorough review of its risk management and governance. It tells the market that the firm takes balance sheet discipline seriously. Sky’s willingness to go through this process sends a strong signal.
Participating in the process was also a personal goal to help bridge the gap between the two worlds and increase understanding on both sides. The exercise surfaced persistent biases, such as treating USDC as far riskier than Treasuries or penalising overcollateralised ETH or BTC backed loans more heavily than investment grade corporate bonds, even though their liquidity is often greater.
Over time, shared language and better awareness of DeFi’s strengths, such as real time transparency into balance sheet flows and asset returns, can narrow this gap. In traditional banking, similar updates can take days or even weeks.
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