Maker is a vault system, not a pool: the interesting numbers are what stands
behind DAI (the collateral composition) and how safe each vault is (the vault
panel). Neither is quoted; both are measured from logs and checked against
the chain.
Which collateral types are in the ledger
The ledger lists the collateral types Maker’s own IlkRegistry names. The
registry is read from the chain (list(), then info(bytes32) per ilk, the
same calls rake maker:validate:ilks has always made) and persisted as
maker_ilks (see the data dictionary). It is
refreshed by the nightly reference-data job and by rake maker:ilks:sync.
Nothing is typed in: an ilk Maker onboards appears in the ledger once the
registry has been synced, and until the first sync the page shows an empty
state rather than a list from memory.
The registry gives every ilk a class, and the class decides what can be
measured:
| Class | Meaning | In the ledger? | Vault collateral counted? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1, 2 | gem-join adapter (standard or legacy) | yes | yes |
| 6 | Lite PSM, a swap facility | yes (its SellGem/BuyGem flows) |
no: ink is set to unbounded |
| 3 | real-world asset | no | no: ink is a nominal unit |
| 4 | D3M, debt placed in another protocol | no | no collateral is held |
| 5 | allocator line | no | no: ink is a fixed placeholder |
| 7 | staking engine | no: its events are not decoded here | yes |
A type the registry stops listing is retired, not deleted: its last-known
adapter is still read (so LINK, YFI and MANA residuals stay in the ledger in
token units), but its class can no longer be verified, so the vault panel
reports it as its own group rather than folding it into a total.
Reserves are running sums of every join and exit note (or SellGem and
BuyGem) recorded by the ilk’s adapter, the one the registry names as its
join. An adapter that emits neither pattern shows no activity rather than an
estimate.
How the ledger is priced
Value and shares use daily closes measured from named Uniswap V3 pools, listed
in db/data/maker_pricing_pools.yml and cited on the page under “Prices
measured from”: USDC/WETH for dollars, WBTC/WETH and wstETH/WETH as ratios
converted through the same day’s WETH close. USDC is fixed at one dollar. A
gem symbol the file does not map is family Other: reported in token units,
excluded from valued shares, never priced by guesswork. A day on which any
priced family has no close is left out of the composition entirely.
The vault panel
Per-vault collateral, debt and safety are replayed from the Vat’s own event
stream at a snapshot block (dfrds_maker_vaults), one cross-section every ~30
days of blocks on Mondays at 03:00 UTC. Safety is ink × spot over art ×
rate: 1.0 at the liquidation boundary, comparable to an Aave health factor
and not the collateralisation ratio usually quoted. Debt is real for every
type; collateral is counted only where the registry says ink is a balance,
which is why the two figures are published with their scope and never divided.
Coverage and known exclusions
The page’s coverage card reads the persisted statement of the last vault
panel run: “N of M vaults computed; skipped: ink is not a balance X, sentinel
ink Y”, alongside how many ilks the registry listed, at which block, and how
many retired types are kept. The same lines open both CSVs the page offers
(the ledger, and the vault panel’s rows above $100 of debt), which need the
Data subscription like every download here.