[RFC] Embed philanthropy into Uniswap by facilitating free swaps to and from the stablecoin that funds public goods

Our proposal

Glo Dollar is the stablecoin that funds public goods and charities at no cost to the user.

We propose that Uniswap makes swaps to and from Glo Dollar (USDGLO) exempt from fees.

Doing so has three benefits:

  1. Embedding philanthropy into Uniswap. Uniswap would make it easier for us to grow our market cap, and as we grow our market cap, more public goods will be funded.
  2. Facilitating embedded philanthropy into the wallets of Uniswap users. As the barrier of fees would be removed for users, they’d be more motivated to buy and hold Glo Dollars and fund public goods at no cost.
  3. Support the development of an alternative US regulated stablecoin that benefits the public and the broader crypto ecosystem.

Most swaps to Glo Dollar are made on Uniswap, and it could result in many more swaps if fees were waived to grow our market cap and fund more public goods. At scale, each additional million in Glo Dollar market cap would generate up to $50,000 in public goods funding per year—at no cost to the user.

What is Glo Dollar?

Stablecoin companies generate $7.4 billion annually from their reserves.

Our approach is different—we funnel 100% of profits to charitable causes. By adopting Glo Dollar, you fund your favorite public goods without paying for it. We call it Automatic Public Goods Funding (AutoPGF).

Our users choose which causes to support: web3 public goods, fighting extreme poverty, or combating climate change.

Individuals and companies embed zero-cost philanthropy with Glo in many ways. Gitcoin and Polygon Labs added Glo Dollars to their treasuries. Others pay salaries in Glo Dollars, or use Glo Dollar backed credit cards.

When you hold Glo Dollars, you can choose the causes you’d like to support from our dApp. All our donations are made onchain and reported on our website.

Glo Dollar is 100% fiat-backed, always redeemable 1:1 for USD and USDC, and is issued and regulated in the US. Glo Dollar is available across 7 blockchains: Ethereum, Celo, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Stellar, and Base.

Rationale

Uniswap users can swap between USDC and USDT without paying fees.

Swaps from USDT or USDC into Glo Dollar (USDGLO) incur a fee of 0.25%. For example, if a user exchanges $1,000 worth of USDC for USDGLO, they would pay a fee of about $25.

Because holding Glo Dollars = funding public cost (at no cost), we believe that users should be motivated to swap Glo Dollars without paying fees.

Risks

Glo Dollar is 100% fiat-backed, always redeemable 1:1 for USD and USDC, issued and regulated in the United States, and receives monthly independent attestations.

In April, we received our Bluechip rating, with an initial B grade. This places us in the top 10 fiat-backed stablecoin, and we’re deemed safer than Tether’s USDT, FRAX, FDUSD, among others. Glo Dollar received the following assessments:

  • Stability: Stable
  • Management: Very low risk
  • Governance: Low risk

Glo Dollar is developed by the Glo Foundation and is issued by Brale. Brale is a US regulated money services business, which is the same regulatory framework under which Circle issues USDC.

The Glo Consortium

If Uniswap decides to move ahead with this proposal, we’d love to invite Uniswap also to join the Glo Consortium, our partner collective that helps us grow Glo Dollar adoption either by integrating with Glo, building with Glo, or holding Glo Dollars.

Relevant links

2 Likes

We don’t think such exemptions make sense. Also, are you talking about Uniswap front end? or from the contract level? Isn’t the LPs the ones that decide on the fee?

Thanks for your proposal. There’s no way to do this practically in v3, as liquidity provider fees are configured to one of four settings (1, 5, 30, or 100bps); 0 bps is not an option. Additionally, those fees go to liquidity providers in exchange for putting their capital at risk. Even if we could implement a 0 bps fee pool, it’s not clear to me that anyone would opt to provide liquidity in it if they weren’t going to earn a return.

Uniswap v4 will be much more configurable, and it could be a cool idea to explore a hook that routes some LP fees to public goods funding via Glo Dollar.

1 Like