Announcing Dharma's Intention to Propose the Retroactive UNI Distribution

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Context
Why: Retroactive Airdrop Excludes Proxy Contract Users (e.g. Dharma, Matcha, etc.)
How: Application For Retroactive Proxy Contract Airdrop [For Projects / Apps]
Code: https://github.com/dharmaprotocol/excluded-uni-airdrop-users
Phase 1 Details: https://gov.uniswap.org/t/proposal-excluded-proxy-contract-airdrop-phase-1/

Dharma intends to formally propose Phase 1 of the Retroactive UNI Distribution proposal on Friday 23 October.

We are announcing this in advance in order to give time for UNI holders to delegate to parties who they are aligned with on this vote — whether they are in support or opposition of the proposal.

We invite all UNI delegations to reach out to us with questions, concerns, or feedback.

A brief FAQ on the proposal.

What is Phase 1 vs. Phase 2?
There are two rough cohorts of users included in the Retroactive Distribution Proposal: users of application integrations and users of DEX aggregators. Given that these two cohorts have very different sizes and very different end-user characteristics, we are separating our proposal into two sequential phases: Phase 1 includes users of the application integrations, Phase 2 includes users of DEX aggregators.

How many users are included in Phase 1?
Phase 1 includes 12,600 addresses.

Won’t this just dilute existing UNI holders? Where is the UNI coming from?
This proposal does not dilute existing UNI holders, as it creates no new UNI. If passed, this proposal would transfer UNI from the Uniswap Community Treasury to these users. No new UNI would be minted.

Won’t this just put downward price pressure on UNI?
Perhaps, but this proposal calls for the distribution of ~5m UNI (current value of ~14.6m USD). With >200m USD in daily trading volume (>20m USD in daily volume on Uniswap alone), this distribution represents less than 10% of daily trading, and we believe is unlikely to materially impact the price of UNI.

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I stand in opposition to the way that this is being approached.

The vast majority of support for this proposal does not come from end users - it comes from entities who are very heavily invested in the corporations backing Dharma and other DeFi companies.

A proposal like this shouldn’t begin with an ambitious startup corporation. It should begin with an end-user or a group of end-users. It should then garner support as an autonomous proposal before going to a vote.

However, instead, Dharma plans to use its whale voting power and VC alliances to smash it through both the proposal and voting stages.

This may be tokenized governance, however this certainly is not decentralization.

I will be voting no and I will be working hard to secure delegators before the voting period begins.

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End user of Dharma, ergo Uniswap. I’m in favor!

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End user of Dharma too. In favor.

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Why would any holder vote yes to this? Treasury tokens are intrinsically from the holders. The only people in favour of this are people directly to benefit form it, either receiving money or taking control from the protocol. This is the second attempt of Dharma at taking control of the protocol, be wary.

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Why in the world would any uni users support this who are not directly getting airdropped uni from this proposal? If this proposal gets passed, it just shows how ineffective uniswap governance is. While you guys are at it, why not just airdrop another 10mil uni to yourself after? lmao.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Spending money from Treasury in a manner that doesn’t benefit current holders of UNI is functionally the same thing as dilution.

Treasury funds should be spent in a manner that generates an ROI. Where is the ROI from giving out free UNI to these users? Shouldn’t these funds go towards marketing/development of the ecosystem?

Do you have any pitch as to how this financially benefits current holders of UNI, even if indirectly? Without that I don’t think you will gain support. Without that you are relying on the argument that it is the “right” thing to do from a moral perspective, but most people will not be convinced by that.

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Nah, Dharma wants “phase 1” to pass to bolster their power to pass “phase 2” and pretty much give them complete control of uniswap governance.

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Not sure why you’re saying that Dharma is “taking control of the protocol”. These tokens would only be claimable by our users, not by Dharma, and most of the distribution doesn’t even go to our users (only ~22% of the Phase 1 distribution would go to Dharma users).

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Here we go again.

An organization handling 2.71 Billion USD in locked value, and we are going into our 2nd round for 12k * 400 UNI governance tokens = 13.8 Million USD @ current price.

The purpose of a governance token is to ‘govern’ how the treasury is used. Marketing, rewarding devs, rewarding community participants, upgrading our app, etc. In an effort to ‘decentralize’ this governance, we air-dropped a crap-tonne (canadian for a lot) of tokens to wallets of the ‘little guys’. The same little guys you purport to defend in your delegation pitch. Additionally, i heard you and your guests on the ‘trust bubble’ admit that you are not fundamentally opposed to giving Dharma et al. users their drop. (bless their hearts for they are mostly blissfully unaware of this debate).

Now let’s fast forward…

  • You stand in opposition of letting the ‘little guy’ claim their air-drop
  • You stand in opposition of letting the Uniswap governance community embrace another 12k souls to enrich this group
  • You stand in opposition, apparently, of diluting the governance pool so that the ‘whales’ won’t have their way with us

Dharma does not own those addresses. They do not have any financial incentive here except to campaign faithfully for their ‘little guys’. To be honest, they sound the more honourable for it. At no point have i heard anything but carefully woven appeals for their users. They have been respectful, transparent, and committed to their principles from the beginning.

What have we done in response?

  • We have accused them of manipulation to control Uniswap
  • We have slandered them and their attempted ‘overthrow’ of our community
  • We have accosted them for forming an evil plutocracy with fellow conspirators
  • We have made every effort to conjure whatever fantastical scenario we can dream up to fulfill our own self-serving narrative that we are defending the ‘little guy’

VCs are necessary to secure enough funding to keep the Unicorn going. Code doesn’t write itself. Check out the UNI investor group here. And here is the SEC filing. Dharma Labs itself has survived 3 rounds of investment. Can you appreciate how hard it is to work for a startup, much less feel responsible for the livelihood of everyone that works for you? I know, i’ve been a part of 2 failed startups (not all failed mind you). The anxiety felt by the teams who didn’t know when the plug would be pulled is heart wrenching. Watching your hard work and passion go for naught is devastating. And, here we are bemoaning the ‘Whales’! Dharma Labs is not a whale. They are an honest organization trying to make their way through this crazy space we call home, and they are trying to help their ‘littler guys’.

There’s an old Indian proverb. “when you are a flea on the back of a camel, even the fly next to you looks huge and you don’t even know you are on the camel”

The delegation mechanic allows you to vote with tokens that were ‘delegated’ to you. It absolutely IS decentralized, because someone ‘delegated’ their UNI to dharma because they believe in their approach. They can just as easily retract their delegated UNI when they no longer agree with their platform. Now, if you are going to convince us that big ‘whales’ with lots of UNI are lining up to support Dharma, then Chris, you don’t have an issue with Dharma do you? At that point you are faced with the contradiction between your decentralized beliefs and what the Uniswap Governance structure seems to be allowing right beneath our noses. This conclusion, of course, is ironic, given that we often claim that the ‘governance mechanism’ is perfectly fine as is. This contradiction has to be solved somehow.

I say we help the Dharma et al. ‘little guys’. Embrace them and welcome them to our community. Dharma isn’t asking for lower thresholds on either proposals or quorum here. They are doing what they can to defend the best interests of their users. I think that’s commendable. I must also disclose that i hope their organization succeeds. A mobile experience that simplifies the UI is exactly what crypto-DeFi needs for wider adoption and support.

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Existing UNI holders should support this because many projects that integrated Uniswap were retroactively penalized for doing so by being excluded from the original airdrop. This retroactive penalty disincentives future products / projects from investing in the Uniswap ecosystem, as they too may one day be excluded from airdrops of this nature.

So UNI holders should support this, to foster the best projects to continue to invest in the Uniswap ecosystem.

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Existing UNI holder, Dharma user & receiver of first UNI airdrop here. I support this proposal and will vote in favor :slight_smile:

Also, kudos to Dharma for being so active in Uniswap governance. Great work!

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Thank you for so eloquently coming to our defense on this matter @rabbidfly!

@chrisblec has some interesting procedural arguments that I think do hold water here from a purely philosophical standpoint – in the ideal world, proposals like this would be readily submittable by community members.

In practice, though, this is quite difficult given the current distribution dynamics and proposal thresholds for UNI — the stagnation of Uniswap governance up until now (despite a litany of different proposals being heavily discussed in these forums) is demonstrable evidence to this point. Our first proposal aimed to remedy exactly this, and was strenuously opposed by many of the same community members who’ve been vocally opposed to the retroactive distribution proposal.

I want to also quickly address a misconception, namely:

This is just plainly false; the vast, vast majority of UNI that has been delegated to Dharma are from known entities who are not invested in Dharma, directly or indirectly, in any capacity. We have no overlap with Uniswap’s cap-table of known investors. Investors who delegated to us did so because we’ve been active, technical contributors to Compound’s governance. That’s pretty much the full story.

Finally — a plea for civility!

This is going to be a contentious proposal — probably for good reason! Let’s keep ad-hominem at a minimum. I assume no ill intention of @chrisblec and others; I hope they can do the same for us. We’re simply the messengers acting on behalf of our users and the users of many other projects affected by the proxy contract exclusion.

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please UNI holders delegate to yourself or to parties that stand against this proposal before the proposal goes alive

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How will dharma users who receive this airdrop be able to UNI vote using your wallet?

Why not first support a proposal that reduces market impact of airdropping more UNI into the market; such as a ETH/UNI rewards proposal? This increases liquidity depth so smaller sells are more stable in the market.

Your analysis of daily volume justifying price impact is missing a key component: market sentiment. News of another UNI airdrop passing will add to the current negative market sentiment.

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I won’t comment about the airdrop, but I just want to say that I am happy to see this being voted with the original governance rules, for two reason:

  1. If the proposal passes, there will be no doubt that it was legitimate
  2. If the proposal passed but with 30m quorum, it would have been forever tainted with accusations and drama

That being said, it’s going to be fun to watch, good luck Dharma!

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I’ll hold off of my opinion as well but wanted to say that I respect your comment here @Agusx1211.

Personally I feel much better about this (potential) than the previous one. Looking forward to seeing more discussion here. Everyone’s opinion is welcome, just keep it respectful and backed by arguments :+1: :clap:

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There are 2 types of voters here.

Type 1: Investment-backed entities (and their associates) with interlinked business strategies & profit motivations

Type 2: End-users with no connections to those entities or VC firms, and with only personal motivations

Once you understand this, this vote becomes not about the airdrop - but about how you think the future of UNI governance - and tokenized governance, in general - should look.

Should tokenized governance look like a pseudo-cartel of interconnected business entities, driven by the motivation to generate a profit off a cohort of users (which you are a part of), being given the sole power to vote for rewards to its users, with the obvious & clear business motivation of retaining those users with a gesture of “good will” so that it can generate more fees off them in the long-term?

Or, should tokenized governance look like the end users - the very ones who are being targeted for revenue & profit - controlling the voting power and ensuring that decentralized protocols make the users the top priority, and not the profit-seeking entities?

I will be voting NO to this proposal, but I encourage Dharma users who are in favor of the airdrop to launch their own proposal so that we can consider this issue without the taints of hidden profit motivation & venture-backed collusion.

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I will also vote no to this ambitious proposal, if Dharma is so interested in its users, she should share it with her own Uni.

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Brendan_dharma just in case you did not see this in the discord,
Please stop attempting to piggy back uniswap protocols userbase for your own self interest. The whole airdrop thing is over and old news mate so please stop trying to make a past event re occur for your own users.

Look maybe you are a good guy so please with the power you have show that to us by doing great things for uni and not for your self and your organization.

We are all uni supporters we are not dharma supporters, it’s like you wearing a Chelsea jersey in a Manchester United crowd, it’s silly right?

So please look into doing constructive things such as
UNI/ETH and other UNI pair pools with slightly higher incentives with a reduction of incentives to non UNI pair pools.

Launch pad/kickstarters on uniswap utilizing $uni token decreasing rug pools and growing uniswap and uni token and trying to make a positive mark by positive growth for uniswap and uni token, and I promise you, you will have the communities respect then.

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