Scaling V4 and Supporting Unichain

[GFXlabs]

Hi @TimeRows, thank you for taking the time to write a comment.

We wanted to get a reply to the core of your question in a timely manner, and we will layer on with a second post later to cover the remaining questions.

@TimeRows

Of the $1.6 million granted to OKU from Uniswap DAO, has it all been fully allocated? Do you have financial reports on how the $1.6 million was spent?

Is this the last planned ask for grant money from the UNI DAO from OKU?

The Ethereum Foundation released a blog post today clarifying its role and vision in the ecosytem. I found it insightful for how Uniswap could avoid some of the optic issues that EF experienced, and could be emulated with Uniswap grant’s going forward. The main quote that stuck out to me was:

What Ethereum Foundation is not:

• 100 strong teams in education, client development, or organizing events, yet all dependent on EF for funding

Oku, in its two and a half years, has not requested funds from the Uniswap DAO to add new features or make other improvements. At the DAO’s request, we have expanded to five chains, but otherwise, the only DAO-related funding we have received was the initial grant from the Uniswap Foundation.

The initial grant funded a team of 10 to work on building Oku for the first 11 months. The last part of the grant was paid out in July 2023. Since then, GFX Labs has invested $2.5M-$3M further into building Oku into what it is today and plans to continue to invest in its growth.

Further, GFX Labs is in good financial condition today. The DAO should not approve this grant because it is concerned about our financial position. It should approve it because we are one of the highest leverage points the DAO can allocate capital to.

When an organization thinks about resource/capital allocation, including our own, it considers the following:

1. What is the goal?
2. What are some of the ways to get to the goal?
3. How much would each method approximately cost? (opportunity cost, labor, advertising, etc)
4. What is the execution risk of each possible method?
5. Ultimately, which avenue has the best outcome, with the least cost, and the least execution risk?

Compared to other organisations, the GFX team has proven, over a multi-year sample, to develop a unique and high-quality application. We have been the core entity securing Uniswap’s presence on new EVM chains, and we have built a robust team that has become experts in Uniswap V3. Most importantly, we have weathered the turbulent environment of the last three years.