Maker (MKR)
Maker itself is a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). The MKR coin is a high-level coin which appears to relate to governance and to the overall value of the project. Further, Maker has created a coin on the Ethereum platform called Dai Stablecoin (ticker symbol DAI), which appears to act as a pure currency on the platform. The end goal for Marker is to minimize the price volatility of its own stable token (the DAI) against the US Dollar. This would mean that DAI eliminates the uncertainty associated with crypto markets, and becomes an asset that maintains its purchasing power through periods of adverse volatility.
Mining/Staking
We don't have any information at the moment about the consensus mechanisms for this project (MKR). DAI is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum platform.
Development Team
The official website lists a fairly large team for this project, albeit the team members only have general titles associated with photos, and no other accompanying information.
Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors
There are no links on the team page to show detailed backgrounds about any of the team members (although the audio on SoundCloud from the regular meetings negates this criticism).
Additional Resources
The project's main website: https://makerdao.com
Link to Wikipedia Page: N/A
Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/MakerDAO
Link to SoundCloud account: https://soundcloud.com/makerdao
Link to Team information: https://makerdao.com/team
Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/price/Maker-MKR
Whitepaper: https://makerdao.com/whitepaper/DaiDec17WP.pdf