I’m a researcher fascinated with the Uniswap protocol.
My approach for the DAO governance is to look at the data (where possible) before making any decisions, and aim to increase the robustness, decentralization, sustainability, and transparency of the Uniswap’s ecosystem and its governance. My aspiration is that both the Uniswap protocol and the DAO should be models for the rest of this industry.
I’d support
Cautious progress with the fee switch, with slow rollout and carefully designed experiments.
Creating committees and focused groups within the DAO for specific tasks, similar to the Deployments Accountability Committee.
Limited spend on funding initiatives and friendly forks. Only support initiatives that clearly benefit the protocol ecosystem. Public goods funding is important, but keeping Uniswap credibly neutral and sustainable is more important.
Measures that add more transparency & accountability to the UF and its grants.
Why me?
I’m deeply familiar with the technical aspects of Uniswap, and have been involved in its ecosystem since 2021. My articles on the topic include:
I have some real-world governance experience as the chairman of the scientific council in my research institute (from May 2021 to December 2023), and a solid reputation and professional accomplishments in my career outside of crypto (>1500 academic citations for my work, h-index above 20).
Last but not least, my potential conflicts of interest are minimal, as I am not professionally affiliated with any other DeFi companies, protocols or DAOs, except being a Senior Researcher at Chaos Labs. Before that I was a consultant that advised DeFi protocols, working mostly within the Uniswap ecosystem.
In my view, LPs are the most important stakeholders in the Uniswap’s ecosytem. Without LPs there’s no liquidity, and without liquidity there’s no trading. In order to make DeFi competitive with centralized exchanges, the LP experience and opportunities must be improved. Furthermore, this must be done in a way that keeps the door open for retail and passive LPs, ensuring that democratic and decentralized participation remains an option.
1. Complete initial funding of the UF Vote: Yes, fund UF Summary: The Uniswap Foundation is doing a good job, and is critically required for the Uniswap ecosystem, essentially serving as the executive arm of the DAO. While some aspects are less-than-optimal in their funding proposal in my opinion, I appreciate its general direction and their willingness to adjust to feedback.
2. UADP Team Election Vote: Abdullah Umar - @Michigan Blockchain Summary: Abdullah’s experience and thoughtfulness make him a very suitable candidate.
3. UAGP Team Election Vote: Nneoma_StableLab, Honn, JoJo, Sov Summary: My decision was based on carefully reading the candidates profiles and on information about their previous roles.
4. Temperature Check - [Issue a Visa Card with Uniswap Logo ] Vote: Abstain Summary: The intellectual property belongs to the Uniswap Labs; the DAO should not vote on such matters.
5. [Temperature Check]: Invest in Ekubo Protocol Vote: No change Summary: Interesting proposal that I wanted to like but could not. Concerns are related to the general lack of investments strategy for the DAO, lack of details required for proper due diligence in this particular case, and high FDV of the future token.
6. [Temperature Check]: Delegation of UNI to Active but Underrepresented Delegates Vote: For Summary: In favor, hoping it will increase the participation of the delegates in voting and help to decentralize the DAO.
7. Deploy Uniswap V3 on Scroll Vote: For Summary: Scroll is an emerging L2 with a good potential and Ethereum alignment. It has a trustless native bridge which will be used for message passing.
1. [Temperature Check] Uniswap Deployments Accountability Committee Competition Vote: All (with different weights) Summary: I think it was impossible to go wrong with this candidate selection. I voted for all, but slightly prioritized those already with experience in the committee and others that I perceived more experienced in coordinating with the chains.
2. Lower Onchain Proposal Threshold Vote: Yes Summary: Will help to decentralize the DAO while keeping the risks minimal.
3. Deploy Uniswap v3 on Rootstock (Bitcoin Sidechain)
Vote: Yes Summary: In general, I’ve started to favor deploying Uniswap on all chains unless there are significant concerns. DeFi on Bitcoin is an emerging area with high growth potential, and the liquidity incentives provided by the chain are appreciated.
4. [Temperature Check] Uni Onboarding Package Vote:$250k for most, with Against for BSC and Abstain for Blast and Taiko. Summary: Why support: to be clear of the goals of this package, I perceive it is as relatively low-cost package, with the main objective to increase Uniswap’s market share. For that prioritizing the newer chains with smaller incentive amounts makes sense. The investments are only somewhat data-driven, both because many of the chains are simply too new to have reliable trends in their historical data, and because most of the benefits are expected to show up from the future growth of these chains. The initial amount of $250k can be increased later on if the program appears to successful, especially if the chains match this amount in their own incentives, or similar. Why Against or Abstain:
BSC is an established chain where Uniswap has been present for significant duration and failed to establish a notable market share. If (and that’s a big if) the DAO thinks it needs to change this situation, a more data-driven approach like the one Gauntlet is doing with Arbitrum would be more suitable, rather than just throwing money at the chain.
On a different note, since Blast and Taiko are not in the mainnets yet, or even audited yet, so I think it’s premature to allocate anything at this point.
Uniswap Revitalization and Growth Proposal Vote: For Summary: After some deliberation I decided to support the initiative package. It will strengthen the Uniswap’s market position on newer chains, reward and align important Uniswap ecosystem players (GFX Labs and Merkl), and help to move away from the Labs UI as the only option. It’s not perfect and the process felt rushed, but would be good to get the ball rolling, and hopefully the DAO will be open to future improvements in the package.
Vote: For. Initially (in 2023) had some concerns related to the deployment & maintenance costs (e.g. documentation, integration) and the potential for it to steal the focus from Uniswap v4. However, after looking at the empirical LP performance (good results) and trading popularity of the v2 deployment on the mainnet, I changed my opinion, and now fully support deploying v2 along v3.
Vote: Yes, Upgrade the Factory Owner. An epic proposal! I’m broadly supportive of it, and can only agree that the preparation work is excellent. At the same time, I do have concerns related to LPs. The needs of UNI stakers should be balanced with the needs of the LPs. LP interests should be more widely represented in the DAO voting, otherwise we have a situation where there’s taxation without sufficient representation.
Vote: For. I’m happy to see this proposal and strongly support the idea of diversifying/derisking the treasury as soon as the legal concerns are alleviated. It makes sense to do this regardless of whether we think about it from the mark-to-market value’s perspective ($6 billion) or from the unissued shares perspective.
Vote: Deploy, with $500k in incentives as recommended in the proposal, to match the contribution of Sei. It will certainly be interesting to observe whether the rapid finality and short block times Sei advertises significantly affect empirical metrics such as execution quality and LP profits.
Vote: Update Process. I agree with streamlining of the process. Most of the last year’s on-chain Uniswap DAO votes have been for new deployments, which is not an insignificant overhead (including gas fee costs) to the delegates, and in most cases the DAO is already rubber-stamping the deployment accountbility committee’s recommendations. It’s crucial that there’s a challenge period kept to escalate the deployment for vote if there are some issues.
Karpatkey - because they undeniably are experts in treasury management.
Steakhouse Financial - because they have the expertise, I liked their “Benchmarks and performance attribution for DAO treasuries” report, and see some merit in the argument to keep it all on-chain for transparency.
404DAO - because their application shows high professionalism and relevant expertise.
nathanvdh - because he can be more impartial as an unaffiliated individual, and he correctly stresses the risks of frontrunning.
JoJo - because he has the relevant experience, and because has concrete and convincing ideas for utilizing the treasury.
Vote: For. This vote is in line with the Sei’s, Manta’s, Taiko’s, and Moonbeam’s onboarding packages that have passed the temperature checks. Sei’s deployment includes $500k in LP incentives (since they’re promised to be matched by the chain), the others $250k in LP incentives.
Votes: Against + Abstain. The DEF does seem to be doing a good job, however, I voted against this request as asking for public goods funding, and my delegate statement clearly says that I don’t believe the Uniswap DAO should fund public goods. This is both due to neutrality issues, and because these days DEXes have relatively small profit margins, especially compared with L1/L2 projects. Additionally, for someone not based in the US, it’s difficult to evaluate the cost effectivenes. Grant-based approach with clear milestones and requirements, including increased transparency and reporting, would be a better option; funding the current request may send a bad signal on the thoroughness of the DAO with their funds. Contrary to some comments in the forum, I disagree very strongly with the attitude that the DAO should pay talented individuals whatever they ask for, since it has “a treasury of 4 billion”. I abstained in the “Options” proposal since it was not clear if the DEF would accept the different terms and amount.
Vote: Yes, Proceed. I support the program as an initial 3 month experiment, hopefully as a something from which lessons can be learned and more iterations made in the future. Delegate compensation is important, however, ultimately, I’d expect some better solutions over the hard problems presented by such as scheme, such as the conflicts of interest, selection of the “best” delegates for the DAO, and dealing with the overall issues created by the “1 token – 1 vote” governance.
Vote: Deploy without incentives. In general there is little to lose by deploying Uniswap on any legitimate chain. Since the TVL on Redstone is low at the moment, deploying the LP incentives is premature.
Voted, in the order of preferences: $750k – $500k – $1M – $250k – Do Not Fund
The funds will mostly be used for a Gauntlet-run liquidity mining program. So far, Gauntlet-operated v3 LM programs have seen mixed success. Some pools were able to take market share away from competitors, and in most pools, the incentives facilitated more liquidity and resulted in swap execution at better prices. On the other hand, LPs were perhaps less forgetful than we hoped for, and typically didn’t keep their liquidity in the pool after the incentives ended. Nevertheless, Arbitrum has been great for Uniswap and DeFi in general, and it would be fair to pay back some of that by contributing to the LP incentives.
Regarding the amount, the idea would be to try to match Arbitrum’s contribution at a 50:50 ratio. At the time of the voting, the price of ARB was around $0.80, meaning that Arbitrum’s contribution would be around $800k. From the options, $750k was the closest fit.
[TEMP CHECK] Uniswap Onboarding Package - OKX Chain Vote: Against. The vote is specifically for the incentives, not the deployment itself. Giving out incentives would be premature due to OKX chain’s low TVL, at the moment lower than any other chain that has received similar incentives. Even more importantly, the majority of liquidity will be contained in Uniswap’s pools with the OKB token, supporting such incentives effectively means the OKB token is promoted at the expense of UNI holders, which would set a very bad precedent.
[TEMP CHECK]- Revised - Uniswap Onboarding Package - OKX Chain Vote: For. I support the official deployment of Uniswap on the OKX Chain. It’s a pity though that the frontend deployment & maintenance cost ($105k) is not explicitly stated in the proposal. It would be great to state it clearly, to keep Uniswap’s governance decisions legible to newbies and outsiders.
The Uniswap Revitalization and Growth Program has been a significant expense for the DAO so far and, if positively evaluated, will continue to be so in the future as new chains continue to emerge. It should be carefully analyzed, and its results should be reported. This could create valuable knowledge not just for Uniswap’s community but for the entire web3 space, where liquidity mining campaigns remain a contentious topic.
In my opinion, this task is too important to be rushed. In its current state, the StableLabs proposal is not convincing enough, and it’s unclear whether the metrics it plans to evaluate (such as user retention) are the most relevant to the program’s objectives (gaining market share for Uniswap on newer chains). Additionally, it’s not clear why it proposes to analyze Arbitrum, where URGP funds were not deployed. The LM campaigns on Arbitrum have different objectives, a different operator, different distribution weights, and a different approach to pool selection, so bundling the analysis together doesn’t seem to be a good idea.
I would accept the proposal if it were improved, but a better approach might be for either the UF or the DAO to define the metrics to be evaluated, outline the expected outcomes, create a call for proposals, and allow service providers to submit competitive bids.
[Temp Check] Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative - Cycle 2 Vote: For. I think in the longer term, paid governance participation is required to ensure that the DAO remains sufficiently robust against attacks and decision apathy. The metrics are debatable, but perhaps we should retain the same for the initial 3 months.
[REDO: Temp Check] Activate 2, 3, 4 bps fee tiers on Uniswap v3 on Base Vote: Yes, activate additional tiers. I support this initiative as an experiment. There are several risks, connected to failing to regain market share on Base, creating a race to the bottom for LPs, and creating liquidity fragmentation (bad not only for the LPs and traders, but also protocols using Uniswap as price oracles.) The risks should be recognized and the possibility of a failure admitted, and monitored.
Uniswap Delegate Reward Initiative - Cycle 2 Vote: For. Rationale same as for the temp check. However, I agree that before committing to further iterations, the reward program should be evaluated and adjusted. I particular, I’d like to see moving towards code of conduct for the delegates participating in the program (or binding principles stated in some other way). We needed clearer guidance on how to deal with conflicts of interest for the delegates, as well as the goals and principles of the DAO itself.
Proposal to active 2, 3, 4 bps fee-tiers on Base Vote: For. Following my support in the temp check, I also support this on-chain vote.
I’m of the view that rather that stopping and doing larger amount of research before proceeding, we need to view this change as an experiment that itself is a core part of the research. The results will facilitate modeling the various “what if” scenarios in the future, for this and similar situations. We have a research question, we have some hypothesis, let’s see how it plays out.
Forse Analytics for Uniswap Revitalization and Growth Program Vote: Abstain. The proposals is improved since the temp check, for instance the funding requirements reduced form $70k to $60k and some coordination with Gauntlet apparently has been done, in my view there’s still doubt whether the proposed study will help to answer the core question - has the UGRP been a good investment for the DAO?
UAC Renewal S3 Vote: Renew UAC. It’s clear that the UAC has significantly expanded its set of duties, and as a result it seems natural to have a more permanent set of UAC members (to retain institutional knowledge), and to increase the headcount (to manage the increased workload). I do have some concerns that there maybe arise some centralization-of-power risks within the DAO in the future, but don’t think this is an issue right now.
Approved Budgets Rebalancing Vote: Approved Rebalance. In my view, it has always been the practice of the various DAO programs denote payments in USD amounts, rather than UNI amounts. For instance, the UNI price has increased in the spring of 2024 allowed the programs to spend less UNI at that time. Since the price has decreased significantly since then, it’s expected that the UNI amounts need to be topped up.
Uniswap Delegate Race Tiebreaker Vote: Both (create an extra 16th spot). I’m of the view that we need to follow precedent when such is present. In the previous Delegate Race there was a precedent that the program was expanded to accumulate one extra delegate. Not doing the same here, especially in such a contentious situation, would be arbitrary and capricious.
Vote: Abstain. While the updated proposal is improved, it still doesn’t address my core issue, so unfortunately I cannot support it. Additionally, while I don’t have strong enough objections to vote against, I would prefer that this analysis was done by a neutral third party rather than an entity strongly tied to the DAO itself - it’s a drawback not a benefit in my view, because a priori it makes getting objective answer less likely.
Vote: For. Agree on the point that “We’re leaving incentives on the table”. Additionally, getting more engaged with the chains can be a good way how get the Uniswap protocol in front of their users and increase the core metrics of the protocol. While getting these incentives is not a priority for Uniswap in my view, the cost/benefit ratio could be quite good. If not, it’s just a 6 month trial, not an extensive commitment from the DAO.
[TEMP CHECK] - Onboarding Package for Lisk Vote: For. In general I support deployments on L2s. While the current TVL is tiny, Lisk has been around for a long time and is likely to deliver a solid L2 once everything is ready. Matching incentives and POL is appreciated, and deserve UNI commitment from the DAO.
Vote: Alicecorsini, _JoJo, Doo, Sov, Marian in equal weight. The vote was based on reading candidate profiles and, for some of them, on previous familiarity with their work.
[TEMP CHECK] - Tally Uniswap Proposal Vote: For. I strongly support funding Tally. It has been essential to the DAO. This grant is also a good opportunity to shape the work somewhat, for instance:
towards more open (open source) and third-party clonable governance tools
support for maintenance Tally Zero to eliminate single points of failure and create a useable backup option accepted by the community
A brief comment in addition: in contrast to some other delegates, I see this is as mostly a vote to retroactively compensate Tally for the their efforts. The additional leverage over future direction of their work is another important, but secondary reason. The fact that this in a sense we’re also funding public goods is more or a nice accidental thing to me, and not a reason for this vote at all. I remain skeptical in funding public goods from Uniswap treasury in general.
[TEMP CHECK] Uniswap DAO Principles Vote: For. As one of the authors of the Principles, I see that this document could increase the shared understanding of how to DAO should operate, and in this way help delegates, especially new delegates.
[Temp Check] - Adopt The SEAL Safe Harbor Agreement Vote: For. This proposal will increase the likehood that funds are rescued in the event that Uniswap is hacked. While that is unlikely, minimizing the damage if that happens is still very important.
[TEMP CHECK] Scale Uniswap Liquidity on Celo Vote: For. My voting has been to generally support these packages. CELO is an L2 with a long history as an independent L1 in the previous cycle. The UNI incentives are more than matched by their own incentives ($250k+$105k in UNI vs $350k in CELO).
[TEMP CHECK] Metal L2: Bridging TradFi and DeFi Through Uniswap V3 Vote: Abstain. So far my voting has been to generally support these packages, especially if matching is provided. However, in this case there are some concerns related to very low TVL, lack of historical accomplishments, and plans to spend most on the incentives on pools with the native MTL and XMD tokens.
Discretionary Budget from UAC for Co-Incentive Campaigns Vote: For. The vote will enable the DAO to move faster and spend its already allocated funds, which is an understandable request. At the same time, I hope that the approach to replace on-chain votes with snapshots will not become something that we’ll continue to see as part of normal operation in the future, as that contracts both the established governance process and the DAO Principles.
Incentive Package for Sonic (Formerly Fantom) Vote: For. My voting has been to generally support these packages. Sonic has a long history as an independent L1 (then called Fantom). The UNI incentives are double-matched by their own incentives ($250k in UNI vs $500k in Sonic).
As a general note on incentive packages. It will soon been a year since the first Uniswap DAO incentive packages were launched. I feel it’s time to reevaluate the current approach to be liberal with these incentives, since it’s not clear whether this provides good return on the money. As a result, in 2025 I plan to be less supportive for new chains asking for incentives, especially for unmatched incentives.
Uniswap DAO Principles Vote: For. Same reasoning as for the Temp Check. As one of the authors of the proposal, happy to see it pass. At the moment we’re engaged with Tally and Agora, with a request to add a checkbox on these sites to indicate that a delegate follows the Principles.
Vote: Yes. The program has proven to be useful in motivating delegates to vote. As a result, the DAO has continued to reach quorum for all on-chain votes (except one). The new reward cycle brings in some small improvements to the program, hope to see further improvements in the next cycle.
Vote: No Same rationale applies as above, since $21M of the incentives are for Unichain. I’m not against v4 liquidity incentives in the current form and size.