Deep Dive
1. Staking Rewards Overhaul (31 October 2025)
Overview: Sky Governance approved replacing SKY→USDS rewards with SKY→SKY staking, incentivizing long-term holding. Users must manually migrate existing positions to the new system.
This update aligns staker rewards with protocol performance, decoupling from stablecoin payouts. The change also transferred 500 million SKY to the treasury to sustain rewards.
What this means: This is bullish for SKY because it reduces sell pressure from USDS rewards and ties holder incentives directly to protocol health. Stakers now accumulate more SKY, potentially tightening supply.
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2. Core Simplification Proposal (24 July 2025)
Overview: The community proposed simplifying Sky’s core infrastructure to reduce complexity and accelerate “Star” project integrations (e.g., Spark, Grove).
The overhaul aims to modularize governance and treasury management, enabling faster upgrades. This could lower technical debt and improve developer participation.
What this means: This is neutral-to-bullish for SKY because streamlined code could enhance scalability, but execution risks remain. Successful implementation might attract more ecosystem builders.
(Source)
3. SKY Buyback Mechanism (Ongoing)
Overview: Sky Protocol’s decentralized buyback system now spends 300,000 USDS daily (up from ~250,000 USDS) to repurchase SKY from markets.
The mechanism, governed by on-chain parameters, has retired 1.12B SKY (3.28% of supply) as of August 2025. Buybacks are funded by protocol revenue.
What this means: This is bullish for SKY because sustained buybacks counter inflation and signal confidence in treasury sustainability. Reduced supply could amplify price upside during demand spikes.
(Source)
Conclusion
Sky’s codebase updates reflect a focus on supply discipline, governance efficiency, and ecosystem scalability. The shift to SKY-denominated rewards and aggressive buybacks aligns stakeholder incentives with protocol growth, while core simplification could unlock faster innovation.
Will these upgrades help Sky reverse its 90-day -24% price trend amid broader market uncertainty?