Hey Atis, thanks for your thoughtful questions.
First to your comment on the request.
- In our proposal we lay out our vision for the kind of opportunity that lies ahead for Uniswap - 100k’s of hook developers and app development teams building on Uniswap v4, the best researchers in crypto building POCs on Uniswap, and supporting the community in value capture and distribution. Each of these items requires a team to develop a thoughtful funding strategy and deploy a meaningful amount of capital. We fear allowing capital to sit in the treasury unused would mean stagnancy and missed opportunities, and an inability to recognize those opportunities. If we achieve even a small number our goals (with, for example, just one additional Uniswap Labs-type team generating considerable order flow/innovation for the protocol), we believe the benefits to the protocol and ecosystem would be far, far greater than the cost to the treasury.
- From a governance perspective, this funding was approved last summer by a vote in proposal 24. We’ve spent the last year building the operational base from which we can deploy this second tranche of those initially-approved funds. While we believe our track record shows our value to the ecosystem, we’ve been working with a smaller amount of capital - we have our sights on multiplying our results.
Re: KPIs, thanks for bringing this up!
We set internal OKRs on an annual basis, and then set quarterly specific KRs. A few of our strategic OKRs are below
OKR1 - 300 new developers building projects on Uniswap [This has already been achieved, we are at 325 with 2 more hackathons to go]
- A few examples of KRs include: Launching Developer documentation for v4, creating testnets and devtooling with Hardhat & Foundry, hosting Hookathons in NYC and Istanbul, working with grantees to create SDK documentation, and so much more!
OKR2 - Dedicate 100% of funding (grants, RFPs, fellows, etc.) to strategic programs and/or top quality grantees
- Some examples of KRs include: building out improved MENV mitigation strategies, building partnerships with at least 1 focused on MEV mitigation and capture in V4, and funding 8 fellows to conduct DeFi research through TLDR
OKR3: Onboard 3-5 delegates who are long-term- and values-aligned with Uniswap
- Examples include: running at least 1 IRL event for delegates, 0 errors in on-chain proposal creation and cross-chain deployments, completing the MMA audit, and introducing more resiliency into the MMA implementation
Looking forward to 2024, we will set our OKRs according to the three goals set out in our proposal (covered in this section) - many of the items listed may materialize in KRs. While these are directional - and may change as we finalize 2024 planning - I’m happy to share what we are thinking.
- Growth - OKR tied to number of top-tier developers contributing over long-term (6-12+ months) to development of hooks ecosystem (docs, tooling, security standards, routers/aggregators, dev of public goods hooks and libraries).
- Innovation - OKRs tied to outputs of applied research working groups focused on MEV mitigation and supporting experimental implementations of AMM research (i.e., technical specs, RFPs, or POC hooks across privacy preservation, ZKP integration, MEV profit distribution, and OFA designs).
- Governance - OKR tied supporting governance in aligning on the mechanisms by which to capture and distribute value to ecosystem stakeholders (may entail turning on the protocol or Uniswap X fee switch). OKR tied to top-tier devs contributing new value creating infrastructure to protocol.
Re: Projected Team Growth
- Each hire ties to the strategic goals listed above.
- Growth
- Developer Relations Engineer in order to assist in the design and management of grants and grantmaking programs to support the growth of hooks ecosystem
- Senior Product hire to assist in design and strategy for future development of protocol, supporting infrastructure, and hooks.
- Innovation
- Head of Research to build research funding strategy and design strategic research-oriented grants and programs.
- Growth Hire to support scale of research and growth-related programs to increase impact. This hire will also allow current team Heads to shift their energy to leading our Governance / value capture efforts.
- Cutting across all 3 initiatives, we will hire a Grants Lead and a Grants Analyst to support the build out of longer-term oriented grants and strategically oriented grantmaking programs (ie ongoing programs designed to achieve a certain goal, rather than one-off grants), as well as manage relationships with grantees. We are not be able to do this with the 1 Grants team member we have today. Our Growth Hire will assist in our Marketing efforts to amplify the UF’s supoort programs and our grantees. We will hire an EA to support our team’s operations.
Re: Governance approval over $2M.
- We believe the UF should be held accountable to achieve its goals - which is why we return for funding from governance regularly. In the plan above, we will return to increase our Ops funding in mid-2024.
- However, we also need to be set up for success to achieve our goals - and balance our need for accountability with our need to move efficiently. Over the last year, we have seen the kind of time and effort that governance proposals require. To give a frame of reference, our Governance Lead facilitated an ARB funding proposal this past year which took 3 months from hitting the forums to approval. In less extremes scenarios, passing a governance proposal can take 3-4 weeks of time — to draft the proposal, communicate to delegates, answer questions, and rally votes to pass. This kind of timing and dependency upon funding delays our progress towards achieving the results we’ve set out to you, and may be a nonstarter to teams we believe would add value to the Protocol (reliance upon governance approval is nonstandard friction for many teams - and may cause them to seek capital and partnerships elsewhere).
Re: Accountability
- Another fair question. Our goal is to balance accountability to Uniswap governance with our ability to move quickly and efficiently like a startup. Right now, we believe relying upon for Uniswap governance approval for funds provides a sufficient check on our operations. The UF has provided transparency into our financials and our grantmaking over our last year in existence without an oversight committee. We have shown in the past, and here, that we answer all delegate questions with detail and honesty. We have done this because we know it’s a requirement to build trust with the community, as a foundation for your support.
Re: excess tokens
- Based on findings in our fee switch research, we believe sending UNI back to the treasury would put governance at legal and compliance risk related to tax.
- If the UNI token price increases while we diversify our assets into fiat and stables, and we end up with more capital than laid out in this proposal, we commit to spending the capital towards grants and operations at a similar breakdown to our current projections.