Uniswap Foundation Is A Go

Table of Contents

• 99% Votes In Favor
• Top Priority: Team Building
• Questions On Decentralization

With 86 million votes in favor, the Uniswap Foundation project has been green-lit by the community. 

99% Votes In Favor

The proposal to create a new Uniswap Foundation (UF) has passed the final vote. This is what former Uniswap Labs executive Devin Walsh tweeted on Wednesday. Walsh is now acting as the executive director of UF, along with another former Uniswap executive Ken Ng, who is the UF Head of Operations. The UF project is planning to streamline the Uniswap Grant Program (UPG) and make the protocol’s governance system function smoother. The plan was up for a vote among UNI token holders. For the motion to pass, a threshold of 40 million votes needed to be cast in favor of the UF. Even though the initial proposal had seen a mixed response from the community, with an overwhelming 46 million votes in favor of the plan, Uniswap Foundation will now set in action. 

Top Priority: Team Building

The two former Uniswap Labs executives are planning on building a team of 12 and have requested funds worth $74 million from the Uniswap DAO treasury. 

Talking about the UF proposal, Walsh had stated, 

“There's no organization within the Uniswap ecosystem focused on reducing the friction in governance, and that is one area that the foundation will be focused on and is excited to work on. We want to ensure that there will be a large, thriving ecosystem of organizations that are building on, integrating with, and organizing events in support of the protocol.”

The UF has proposed to channel $60 million of these funds to the Uniswap Grand Program, and the remaining $14 million will be used to cover operating costs. The foundation is looking to hire talent for roles like community lead, partnerships lead, governance lead, grants analyst and leads, communications and finance leads, and developer relations and protocol leads. 

Questions On Decentralization

Despite the overwhelming support, some questions have been raised on Twitter on the legitimacy of the community’s voting over such decisions. Since Uniswap is the world’s largest decentralized exchange, crypto-Twitter is claiming that Uniswap’s DAO should determine how funds are used rather than a centralized foundation. Questions have also been raised on the voting outcome, with some claiming it to be a “whale run,” where just the top 20 token holders who hold 99.7% of all UNI voted in favor of the proposal. In that case, it would not truly be a community decision.

Recently the protocol worked with analytics company TRM Labs to blocklist 253 crypto addresses linked to embezzlement or sanctioned protocols, like Tornado Cash. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.