Consensus Check - UNI should fund a political defense organization for decentralized finance

Requests for Comment
30

There are a few things I don’t like about this proposal:

  1. It is still very loosely defined for how much money is being requested. There is no check-in with governance to assess progress and request more funds.

  2. This should not JUST be funded by Uniswap governance. This is essentially a public good for DeFi and I believe any DeFi protocol that wants to considered as a leader in this space should be expected to contribute.

What I like about this proposal:

  1. The authors are dreaming big! For months I’ve heard people say “Uniswap has xxx huge treasury, what should they do with it?”, this is 1). big thinking, 2). legitimately needed and 3) backed by the right people.

  2. The amount of UNI being requested is not crazy. The request is for 1 million UNI, let’s remember the initial liquidity mining rewards were 5 million. Typically, DeFi WAY over pays for capital and way underpays for everything else. If we are willing to give 5 million UNI to people farming and selling the token why is 1 million for ensuring the perpetuity of the industry crazy?

  3. The committee is very solid. People who are questioning the integrity or alignment of this group have not been in DeFi very long.

  4. I believe this proposal is needed. I can’t post links or images here but look at Jake Chervinsky comments on it (proposed committee member and Compound Labs GC). Jake said,

“The days of DeFi flying under the radar are over. Policymakers worldwide are paying attention. Now’s the time to allocate resources to education & advocacy, & this is the right way to do it.”

Let’s read between the lines here. It’s safe to assume Jake knows a lot of public and non-public information about the regulatory environment surrounding DeFi. Jake isn’t prone to hyperbole. He isn’t saying “the days are coming to an end” he is saying, “it’s over”. Right now our risk with this proposal is probably that it is too late not too soon.

Also, Uniswap GC is on the committee, do you think they would’ve joined if they felt this wasn’t needed?

Summary:
I’ll vote for the proposal. I’d like to see the proposal adjusted to include:

  1. commitments from the other leading DeFi protocols
  2. some sort of check-in before the full 1 million allocation is disbursed

But even absent those changes I would still support this on the grounds above.

3 Likes