---
title: "Spark (SPK)"
url: "https://caper.network/wiki/daos/lending/spark"
updated: 2026-09-01
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Spark (SPK)

| Type | On-chain stablecoin allocator & lending protocol; Sky "Star" sub-DAO (DeFi) |
| --- | --- |
| Token | SPK (governance & staking) |
| Governance | SPK-holder voting scoped to the [Spark Agent artifact inside the Sky Atlas](https://docs.spark.fi/governance); signalling via [Snapshot](https://snapshot.box/#/s:sparkfi.eth) |
| Parent | [Sky (formerly MakerDAO)](/wiki/daos/stablecoins/sky-dao) — Spark is Sky's first live Star |
| Launched | SparkLend May 2023; SPK token & airdrop 2025 ([claim concluded 17 Dec 2025](https://docs.spark.fi/governance/spk-token)) |
| Chains | Ethereum plus Base, Arbitrum, Optimism & Unichain via the Spark Liquidity Layer |
| Scale | [~$3.55B SparkLend TVL, ~$2.36B Savings, ~$1.15B deployed by the Liquidity Layer](https://spark.fi/) (live figures) |
| Website | [spark.fi](https://spark.fi/) |

## Overview

[Spark](https://spark.fi/) is an on-chain allocator of stablecoin liquidity and a lending protocol governed by its own **SPK** token — and, distinctively, it is a **sub-DAO** that operates inside a larger DAO. Spark is the first live "Star" in the Endgame architecture of [Sky (formerly MakerDAO)](/wiki/daos/stablecoins/sky-dao), so its scope, budgets, and risk parameters are defined by a governance artifact that lives within Sky's constitution rather than standing fully independent. That structure makes Spark the wiki's clearest worked example of the [sub-DAO pattern](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/subdaos-and-working-groups): a semi-sovereign unit with its own token and voters, nested under a parent that retains ultimate control.

Functionally, Spark does three things — it lends (SparkLend), it pays a savings rate on stablecoins and ETH (Spark Savings), and it routes idle Sky-backed liquidity into external venues to earn yield (the Spark Liquidity Layer). Where standalone money markets such as [Aave](/wiki/daos/lending/aave-dao), [Compound](/wiki/daos/lending/compound-dao), [Morpho](/wiki/daos/lending/morpho) and [Euler](/wiki/daos/lending/euler) answer to no one but their own token, Spark's mandate is set — and can be revised or revoked — by its parent DAO.

## From a MakerDAO front-end to a Sky "Star"

Spark began in May 2023 as **Spark Protocol / SparkLend**, a lending market forked from [Aave v3](/wiki/daos/lending/aave-dao) and stood up by MakerDAO to lend out its own [DAI](/wiki/daos/stablecoins/sky-dao) at a rate the Maker governance voted directly — a native front-end for Maker's stablecoin rather than a third-party venue. It was, from day one, an arm of a DAO rather than a rival to one.

When MakerDAO rebranded to Sky and launched its [Endgame](https://docs.spark.fi/user-guides/getting-started) plan, the design called for semi-independent "Stars" — sub-DAOs with their own tokens and governance that build on Sky's liquidity while remaining bound to the Sky Atlas. Spark became the **first Star to go live**, graduating from an internal product into a token-governed protocol in its own right while staying inside the parent's orbit. Its SPK token, launched in 2025, formalised that half-step: real governance for Spark, still framed by Sky.

## What Spark builds

**SparkLend** is the lending core: users borrow USDC and USDS against ETH, staked-ETH (wstETH, rETH, weETH) and BTC collateral, at rates set through governance rather than a pure utilization curve. **Spark Savings** issues yield-bearing vault tokens (sUSDS, sUSDC) that pay a rate sourced from Spark's allocations, withdrawable back into USDC, USDT, PYUSD, USDS or ETH.

The **[Spark Liquidity Layer (SLL)](https://docs.spark.fi/user-guides/spark-liquidity-layer)** is the piece that makes Spark an "allocator" and not just a money market: it deploys Sky-backed stablecoin reserves directly into external venues — [Aave](/wiki/daos/lending/aave-dao), [Morpho](/wiki/daos/lending/morpho), [Ethena](/wiki/daos/stablecoins/ethena) and tokenized real-world assets — across Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Unichain. Because it can bootstrap products with its own reserves, Spark does not depend on mercenary third-party capital to seed a new market. Its 2025 [$1B tokenized-treasuries "Grand Prix"](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/03/18/blackrock-s-buidl-superstate-and-centrifuge-win-spark-s-usd1b-tokenized-asset-windfall-report) — won by BlackRock's BUIDL, Superstate and Centrifuge — routed a large slice of that liquidity into RWAs.

## The SPK token

SPK is Spark's governance and staking token, native to Ethereum. Its supply is fixed at genesis but its distribution is controlled by the parent: [10 billion SPK were minted](https://docs.spark.fi/governance/spk-token), split **65% to a ten-year "Sky Farming" campaign** (6.5B SPK, released to users through a Sky-controlled Pause Proxy), **23% to the Spark ecosystem & treasury** (2.3B, including the concluded airdrop), and **12% to the team** (1.2B, a 12-month cliff then three-year vest). Users still earn SPK today by depositing USDS into the SPK Farm.

SPK can be staked to earn Spark Points (and, via [Symbiotic](https://docs.spark.fi/governance/spk-token), external restaking points), with staked SPK earmarked to help secure future Spark products. One clause underlines the sub-DAO relationship: **Sky retains the ability to mint additional SPK under extreme circumstances**, governed by the Sky Atlas — the parent keeps a lever over its Star's own money.

## Governance: a sub-DAO of a DAO

Spark's governance does not edit Spark's contracts directly. Instead it revises the **[Spark Agent artifact](https://docs.spark.fi/governance)** — a scoped document inside the **Sky Atlas**, Sky's machine-readable constitution — which defines Spark's budgets, risk settings, asset onboarding, Liquidity-Layer integrations and new-chain deployments. Changes take the form of _Atlas Root Edit Proposals_, so every Spark decision is expressed as an amendment to a sub-section of the parent's rulebook and must stay aligned with it.

SPK holders vote on and delegate over these proposals, with a whitelisted delegate set and an Operational Facilitator plus a risk-review mandate that can stop a malicious or high-risk proposal before it reaches a vote. The result is **scoped sovereignty**: Spark's community steers Spark, but only within a perimeter its parent drew and can redraw. This is the pattern the wiki covers in the abstract under [sub-DAOs and working groups](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/subdaos-and-working-groups) — Spark is what it looks like at a multi-billion-dollar scale.

## Why the sub-DAO model matters

The sub-DAO answers a real governance problem: a large treasury-rich DAO wants to move fast in a new product area without either (a) subjecting every operational decision to a slow full-DAO vote, or (b) spinning out a fully independent protocol it can no longer align. A Star like Spark splits the difference — a dedicated token and voter base for speed and accountability, a constitutional tether for alignment and safety. It also lets the parent concentrate liquidity behind a focused team while keeping the option to wind the unit down.

The cost is the same tether: SPK governance is real but bounded, and the parent's residual powers — controlling the farming schedule, holding a mint switch, owning the Atlas the Agent lives in — mean Spark's holders never have the last word the way an [Aave](/wiki/daos/lending/aave-dao) or [Euler](/wiki/daos/lending/euler) holder does over their own protocol. Whether that trade is worth it is the open question every DAO weighing a sub-DAO has to answer.

## How Caper approaches this

Spark shows a parent DAO delegating scoped authority to a sub-unit and keeping residual control through tokens, budgets and a constitution its Star cannot rewrite. A [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) works on a different unit of trust: rather than nesting governance inside a parent's discretion, it fixes each member's influence with a canonical vote weight `w = (t · v) / (V · T)` that folds together how much of the token they hold (`t`) and a _soulbound, non-transferable_ proof-of-vote balance (`v`) minted on both of a caper's surfaces — 1 per ranked ballot cast, and 0.01 per XRD of gross value on a buy or a sell. The `v` factor cannot be minted for insiders or moved between wallets, and it cannot be bought off a member who holds it, though anyone may mint their own by trading — so influence tracks participation, not a distribution schedule a parent controls.

The same weight drives the [exit right](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights): a member redeems a share of the treasury proportional to that weight and burns their vote balance on the way out. A large bag still matters — `t` is a multiplier, so holdings are not irrelevant — but a bag alone cannot capture the record other members already hold — it mints its own `v` as it buys, and buys nobody else's — and the treasury claim is a first-class protocol primitive rather than a budget a parent grants and can revoke. Where a sub-DAO borrows legitimacy from the DAO above it, a caper builds the accountability into the weight itself.