A Default Node Solution to Power The Developer Toolkit

Executive Summary

MakerDAO is a platform that offers a decentralized stablecoin called Dai, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, and collateralized loans through the Dai credit system. People come to Maker to either create CDP’s, or to buy or exchange Dai.

"From our dev tools standpoint, I can be connected to Ethereum anywhere I am. When I’m at home I have a node, but when I travel I fall back to Infura so I can always do what I want to do with the network."

Mariano Conti

Head of Smart Contracts

Challenges

MakerDAO is one of the oldest projects in the ecosystem. Because it started prior to the Ethereum mainnet, the team had to build everything from the ground up: from smart contracts, to tools to infrastructure. As the ecosystem developed, MakerDAO started creating more developer tools and observed the need to include a node solution as part of its toolkit.

A Core Component of the Developer Toolkit

Infura is applied across a lot of the Maker portals. If a person enters the CDP portal and doesn’t have Metamask, MakerDAO use Infura as a way to populate all that data. MakerDAO also uses Infura as its ‘backup’ node solution to ensure all developers can use the MakerDAO toolkit. If a developer doesn’t have an active node, MakerDAO defaults to Infura. This reduces friction, particularly for new users.