Sky approves $1 billion allocation for Janus Henderson's onchain fund using fresh-out-of-stealth Grove infrastructure

Grove, a DeFi-focused institutional-grade credit infrastructure protocol that part of the Sky ecosystem, launched out of stealth Wednesday in a big way. 

According to an announcement , Sky (formerly MakerDAO) approved a $1 billion allocation into the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Strategy — an onchain collateralized loan obligation (CLO) launched in collaboration with tokenized real-world asset lending protocol Centrifuge — using Grove's decentralized infrastructure.

CLOs are typically defined as securities backed by pools of leveraged loans. They can be an attractive investment option due to their high-yield potential. 

Grove is a non-custodial, decentralized protocol that streamlines capital flows between blockchain-based and traditional finance platforms to lower friction and improve capital efficiency, the company says. Grove is developed by Grove Labs, which is owned by the DeFi-focused financial advisory firm Steakhouse Financial , which itself was incubated by the Sky ecosystem most known for launching the DAI and USDS stablecoins. 

“With the launch of Grove, for the first time, protocols can access liquid, institutional-grade CLOs while maintaining the flexibility to pivot between DeFi and TradFi yield environments," Sam Paderewski, Co-founder of Grove Labs, said in a statement. "This $1 billion allocation from the Sky ecosystem to JAAA is just an early step in supporting a robust onchain capital highway where institutional managers and DeFi protocols can securely, efficiently, and transparently operate on an open blockchain."

Sky rebranded from MakerDAO, the organization behind the longstanding Ethereum-based algorithmic stablecoin DAI , and rolled out a new stable asset called Sky Dollar (USDS) in August 2024. USDS is now the 21st largest cryptocurrency by its market cap of $7 billion, bringing in $2.1 million in trading volume within the past 24 hours, The Block's USDS price page shows. 

Sky also shifted its governance token from MKR to SKY around the time of the rebrand, giving users the option to swap their holdings at a 1:24,000 ratio, The Block previously reported.