Blockchain@Columbia believes that there should be more open discussion on this very important matter, and to this end, we wanted to offer some of our thoughts formed in conjunction with our Uniswap Protocol Lead @jason_of_cs, first on the process front, and as a response to Other Internet’s commentary on it:
To the need for setting the DAO priorities as per providing a “strategic direction setting” for the protocol, our counterargument is that there is no need to curtail or otherwise limit or affect the DAO process, other than proper commentary on the governance forum. If the community deems a proposal serious and interesting enough to initiate vivid discussions on the forum and to merit voting, then we believe that it should be granted the right to be properly considered to its fullest extent, irrespective of any “strategic directions”. In particular, to the example of Ichi’s stablecoin proposals, it would suffice to make note of the facts asserted in Other Internet’s assessment on the governance forum, and let the community decide on the merits and drawbacks of the proposal.
On the issue at hand, which is the process for the procurement of a bridge provider, we agree with Other Internet’s proposal that it would be beneficial for a legal agreement to be reached with the bridge team, so as to better guarantee the quality of the outcome, especially when considering the value of the totality of the Uniswap community. However, we believe that their judgment of the Osmosis paradigm for their selection of a bridge partner was somewhat unfair: Other Internet advocates for a more centrally-driven governance model than we believe is essential, where an informed organization makes a strong recommendation and ultimately in a large degree decides the outcome. We believe that this would constitute an overreach for the DAO’s authority over the protocol, and we call for more openness than the current (and proposed) reticent approach. For the bridge election procedure, we propose that a method similar to Osmosis be utilized to select Uniswap’s bridge provider: experts and informed organizations should seek to engage with the various bridge teams, concisely write down their thoughts on advantages and disadvantages of each of them for our community, engage in an open discussion over the forum, and then let the DAO decide on the full spectrum of available options (with ranked voting, if this is possible in Uniswap Governance). We thus voice our disagreement with and concern for Other Internet’s proposed experiment of a procurement process. We would gladly welcome further open discussion on this crucial issue.