SKY · the buyback and the reward stream are the same coins going round in a circle.
SKY is the governance token of Sky, the protocol formerly called MakerDAO, on Ethereum — ~23.41B circulating out of an on-chain supply of 23.46B that has not moved a single coin since Jul 2025. Nothing is minted and nothing is destroyed; the whole story is one treasury balance draining into the market.
Sell pressure. The DAO treasury paid out 234.9M SKY of staking rewards over 90 days, and the rate stepped up to 22.3M a week on Jul 27 2026 — because the reward is fixed in dollars and repriced into SKY as the price falls.
Buy pressure. The Smart Burn Engine spent 3.37M USDS buying 57.4M SKY back — straight into that same treasury. Despite the name, none of it was burned.
Net. ≈ 0.76% to market over 90 days, easing to ≈ 0.23% next — not because the DAO slowed down, but because the reserve behind the rewards is down to 55.0M SKY.
- Reward reserve empties at the current rate55.0M SKY leftSep 6 2026 · the reserve behind the reward stream runs out unless the DAO refills it
- Monthly settlement reprices the rewardrate resetSep 16 2026 · a lower SKY price raises the token count paid out
The DAO treasury pays SKY staking rewards every week — 18.6M SKY a week until Jul 20 2026, then 22.3M a week from Jul 27 2026. The reward is fixed in dollars and repriced into SKY each month, so a falling SKY price mechanically raises the token count. The reserve funding it is down to 55.0M SKY, which is what caps the next window.
SKY has no vesting calendar at all. It was issued one-for-24,000 against the predecessor governance token, so there is no team, seed or investor tranche behind a cliff, and the treasury vesting contract holds zero SKY. No public evidence of release in window — monitored.
Every SKY that left the DAO treasury in the window went to the staking-rewards distributor and is already counted above — there was no discretionary transfer. Tracked overhangs: the DAO treasury itself (55.0M SKY, the only reserve the market does not yet count), and the upgrade contract holding 2.15B SKY owed to the 88,146 predecessor tokens still un-upgraded, of which about 34.1M is spare. No public evidence of release in window — monitored.
There is no bankruptcy estate and no long-term locked tranche unwinding into SKY. Nothing on this row can fire.
The Smart Burn Engine spends the protocol surplus buying SKY on the open market in 6,000 USDS clips — 561 of them this window, 3.37M USDS in total. All of it lands in the DAO treasury, which is why it counts: that treasury is the one balance the market does not count as circulating.
No SKY is destroyed. On-chain supply has read exactly 23,462,665,147 SKY at both ends of this window and has not moved since Jul 2025, so despite the engine's name nothing has been burned — the bought-back tokens are recycled back out as staking rewards.
There is no separate treasury or foundation bid for SKY. The programmatic engine above is the only protocol buying, and it is already counted. No public evidence of release in window — monitored.
10.21B SKY sits staked in the protocol's staking engine, up 131.1M this window, but stakers can withdraw and their coins are inside circulating supply either way. No new lock with a fixed size was announced.
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