I’m neutral on the proposal and could be swayed either way depending on the details and the execution.
Positives:
- It’s does feel bad to see how under-advertised and little known the DAOs current liquidity incentive programs are. We need to make an effort to change this in the future.
- Achieving better alignment with chains certainly makes sense and could help to make sure we’re not outcompeted by native DEXes.
- It would be good to gather the ideas and get technical help from the chains to implement more innovative forms of incentivization, not just liquidity mining. And even for LM, working with chains may help tp design better campaigns.
- If incentives and KPIs promised by the chains hasn’t been always happening, we need to spend some effort to control this in the future.
Doubts:
- Let’s say the program manages to attract a similar amount of $ as for Compound. $4M is not that large compared to e.g. Uniswap Foundations yearly budget or even to the funding the DAO provides to the DeFi Education Fund. As a result, securing the grants is not critical to the growth of the Uniswap; if an idea is good, it’s not that hard to just fund it from the treasury.
- In contrast, going where the money rather than where the value is risks losing focus. For instance, it would be of much greater importance to restore Uniswap as the #1 DEX on Base rather than extensively incentivize it on a number of smaller chains without much TVL or active users.
- Uniswap Labs is actively working on business development on its own. A separate initiative from the DAO risks duplication of efforts or strategic misalignment with them .
Steven Goldfeder from Offchain Labs recently posted an extremely relevant take. To quote him:
So when considering where to build and whom to partner with, think about the full picture. And ask yourself the key question: which choice will maximize your chances of succeeding long term.