Obviously this proposal is satirical (and heartfelt apologies to those paid well enough to not be able to laugh), but in the wise words of popular philosopher J Cole “all good jokes contain true shit”. It is probably worth reviewing why a joke became one of the top 5 most viewed Uniswap proposals ever. By the way, can anyone tell me how I progress this important proposal to on-chain voting so I can get my fucking money?
Personally, I am relatively supportive of a lobbying group that is pro-defi. It is clear to me that often politicians are particularly poorly informed and it makes sense to me that an open industry should use any tools available to progress forwards. Whilst I think lobbying itself is anti-democratic, I believe “hating the player instead of the game” is a misdirection of energy. I think $20m sending good actors that understand the realities of crypto to lobby directly is probably a pretty good use of money.
I also think that the way the vote passed, the transparency around the proceedings and the level of rigour required to acquire $20,000,000 from a forum post were all significantly lacking what you would expect for a topic as controversial as this.
It is clear this topic will remain controversial and there are a lot of extremely nuanced opposing views, but it is also important to highlight that it is a controversial topic that can impact DeFi industry-wide, and not just UNI token holders.
Anyway, why is there a backlash? I think there’s a series of factors that are prompting the joke to resonate.
1. Governance theatre
It is difficult to avoid the prevalent feeling that there some “governance theatre” occurring, with DAO-shaped hoops simply jumped through to issue the wishes of large holders after discussions in closed-door environments.
A range of factors contribute to this: 1) large delegates and ecosystem participants feel their feedback was not addressed or was outright ignored; 2) significant amount of voting share from the proposal proposer and related parties (something like 7 addresses responsible for huge amounts of pro-vote firepower) ; 3) lack of clarity around who the founders of this effort are creating a “vote to give ourselves money” narrative; 4) centralisation of supply making governance participation futile for many who feel their interests are being voted on without way to make their voice heard – snapshot vote would’ve failed 4:1 without the 3 student groups voting; 5) significant lack of thoroughness or rigour in the proposal making $20m grant surprising, pushing people to believe in foul play and cronyism rather than irresponsibility with treasury.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that decisions are not made by the community but instead by a handful of power brokers. Centralization often results in nepotism and a series of these factors offer the question: is this governance theatre to extract liquidity from the treasury?
2. Purpose of the Uniswap treasury
There are a lot of questions around the purpose of the Uni treasury that have arisen from this grant. It is unsurprising that there are a lot of different views between UNI holders and it is difficult to ignore that the view being most well represented is the view from large centralised supply holders, mostly VCs, who will take cross-portfolio benefits from spending the Uniswap treasury’s money on industry-wide lobbying.
But do smaller UNI holders feel they were “dumped on” for something that perhaps doesn’t directly benefit the UNI ecosystem?
Do non-US based UNI holders have to do another proposal for reg lobbying in their own country?
Would there be less backlash if such an effort was co-funded by a consortium of DAOs or crypto projects?
Perhaps some structure and opinion to how the Uni treasury should be used would be useful to set expectations around what should and should not be funded. Is the Uni treasury for investing in the Uni ecosystem directly only, or is okay to generally fund vague proposals that you believe are probably well intentioned but require effectively dumping on the ecosystem for (fingers crossed) long term cross-industry benefits.
3. Level of rigour required to get $20,000,000 for nothing
I believe there is an expectation that, in order to acquire twenty million dollars by posting on a forum, there should be a “no stone left unturned” approach and a general lack of vagueness. I guess in crypto many ecosystem participants harbour significant cynicism towards traditional finance and traditional government, and therefore (maybe unrealistically) expect a higher standard.
Should it be possible that things like “when will you sell the Uni we grant you?” should be left to vague interpretations, or is it something that should be required info before you vote on the proposal?
Is how you sell important? Should that be specified in a proposal that requests $20m? Do you get to choose which OTC service you go with, can you go with your friend’s OTC and earn him a commission?
Should there be more information before a snapshot vote on who will be involved in this effort, who is securing the $20m grant?
Should there be transparency regarding who is backing the proposer, or top voters? Should the proposer even be allowed to vote on their own proposal?
Should voters have an accurate overview on intended usage of the funds? Should there be any accountability back to UNI holders after the grant is issued? What mechanisms should be in place to ensure the entity acquiring the grant behave in ways that are aligned with the interests of UNI holders, or the Uniswap company? Maybe none?
God forbid if I link to anything Chris Blec has ever written, but he did have (maybe for the first time ever) some actual good points that went without response or reply. Should there be responses to dissenters, as long as they are acting mostly in good faith? Or does it not matter as long as you get the votes you need to pass?
What is the right level of analytical rigour required of a proposal to issue $20m from the treasury? It’s obviously extremely difficult to answer, but I imagine the recent proceedings that left many with questions is not an example of what “good” looks like. Which is a shame, because it was a decent opportunity to do things in a way that left everyone feeling aligned and informed. Nevermind.
I would like to note that any additional vagueness makes proposals passing less believable in a world where you believe in responsible treasury management and therefore reinforces anyone believing in VC-backed cronyism.
4. Twitter account lol
Honestly, if the Twitter account hadn’t posted anything, I don’t think anyone would really be talking about this much.
But an incomplete profile with default profile picture posting it’s second ever tweet to say “we dumped $10m of UNI, thanks” is objectively quite a hilarious way for those that don’t follow Uni governance to find out about this initiative for the first time.
Additional unintentional comedy from the feedback-directed name change to Defi Education Fund, which I think is the correct decision, but looks like intentional doublespeak to people hearing about it for the first time when they find out it’s a lobbying fund.
I understand that the majority of crypto projects are terrible at comms so hard to be surprised.
Bored now
Anyway, I’ve spent way too long writing about this now, but thought it was important to restore my reputation as a credible and important critical thinker and not just a lowest-common denominator comedian.
It’s a complex topic, one that will maybe lead to some better outcomes for our industry (and maybe not).
It’s hard not to imagine how much more well received a consortium-funded “Defense Fund” with superior transparency and cross-ecosystem buy-in may have been. But maybe how some idiots on Crypto Twitter feel about this thing is not important at all in the long run. Everyone has their own vested interests anyway. Decentralisation is perpetual war, after all.
Where is my $10,000,000?
Cobie