Maker founder Rune Christensen joins venture firm Dragonfly Capital

Rune Christensen, the founder of stablecoin protocol MakerDAO, has joined venture capital investment firm Dragonfly Capital, the firm announced on Monday. 

Christensen — who launched MakerDao in 2015 — is joining Dragonfly as a venture partner. Christensen will split his time between contributing to the MakerDao project and his work with Dragonfly, according to the firm.

Dragonfly invested in Maker in 2019 and also has backed firms including 1inch, Compound, and Tagomi, the latter of which was acquired by Coinbase. 

“Rune has been a pioneer pushing the boundaries of DeFi, DAO governance, and protocol security,” Qureshi said in a blog post. “We are honored to have him collaborating with us at Dragonfly, advancing the state of the decentralized economy and supporting our ecosystem of entrepreneurs.”

The total supply of DAI in the market has grown alongside the broader stablecoin market, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. Total supply stands at $8.9 billion as of November 10.

The venture capital investment space has been heating up, with firms ramping up hiring and launching news funds. On Monday, Paradigm announced its latest $2.5 billion venture fund. In June, a16z announced the launch of its Crypto Fund III to invest in the “next wave of computing innovation will be driven by crypto.”

To date, crypto firms have raised more than $21 billion from venture capital fundraise deals, according to data compiled by The Block Research. 

This report and its headline have been updated with additional information.