[Temperature Check] - Activate Uniswap Protocol Governance

very professional for the community… same day decision …

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who is this stakeholder? let us know.

It is imperative to avoid ambiguity in this matter. The Uniswap Foundation was established to serve the community, not insiders. The primary focus of the UF is to utilize the funds recieved to empower the community, ensuring transparency and fairness, rather than benefiting friends of UF members.

If this decision was influenced by a singular venture capitalist, it should be disclosed. The identity of this VC should be made public, not kept secret. The Foundation is not an extension of a large VC, and the DeFi Education Fund is not an extension of a legal department of a large VC.

If a VC is leveraging these two entities to avoid financing issues themselves and instead using funds from governance token holders, then I strongly advocate for the SEC/CFTC to investigate VC practices that prioritize self-interest over decentralized technology, thereby undermining its ethos.

Reference image:

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Yes, we agree with you! The Foundation’s vagueness will only make the community suspicious!

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Ummm … is this contradictory … Uniswap (foundation side not labs) holds themselves as stewards of a protocol. If you invite in one regulator to claim authority and uniaterally assert supervisory powers, then you invite in every regulator (on grounds they are acting to protect their citizen investors).

SVB

Now if you want clarity on the governance process, it is well documented … as an airdrop “gift” (for lack of legal clarity), and the fact that UniSwap labs has double-pinkie promised not to use its ownership to influence voting, then a large enough investor clique can veto anything (think vote off island). So the choices are

  1. design better proposal curation processes to avoid last minute objections (legislative)
  2. come up with procedural rules to know when context changed that the facts no longer support the intent of proposal (executive)
  3. have a parallel corrective mechanism (adjudicatory) to balance out any unfairness that are revealled afterwards (… ie the courts of equity which have doctrines of restitution).

Without evidence of factual basis, it is hard to figure out which of the 3 would apply … but if you are asking for regulatory oversight then the obvious question is whose taxes are being sliced where/when to pay for such (independent) supervision.

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There are two classes of UNI tokens:

  1. Decentralized: These tokens were airdropped or bought on the secondary market, representing a decentralized distribution. They are considered a commodity.

  2. Centralized: These tokens were acquired through fundraising rounds before the airdrop. For instance, A16z holds many tokens because they acquired them via payment in a fundraising round, making these tokens akin to a security.

If the Uniswap Foundation primarily listens to venture capitalists (VCs) who acquired tokens through fundraising, it creates a two-class system: insiders (VCs) and outsiders (airdrop holders and secondary market buyers).

A presumed reason why a VC who owns UNI from a fundraising round might oppose the fee switch proposal is that this proposal introduces a mechanism resembling dividends, further reinforcing the classification of their holdings as securities.

As a result, the real UNI commodity holders, i.e., the airdrop recipients and secondary market buyers, are being disadvantaged.

The Uniswap Foundation appears to be choosing sides.

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Food for thought. Thank you for the enlightenment :call_me_hand:

How they got the tokens is of lesser importance than the fact they didn’t follow the governance process and put up the reason/concern in public (what I assume is the recognised deliberative process) via this forum. So the complaint (correct me if wrong) is the perceived privilege of bypassing the transparency governance process. If so, it sounds like you want track 3, aka the equiv of a

a) please explain “memo” to the Foundation
b) requirement of a legal justification or legitimate excuse (these are legel concepts to escape blame)
c) … and if the response is not satisfactory … a way for the community via delegates to express sentiment/sanction

The crux is how much discretion should staff of the Foundation have in handling matters … should they be akin to a trustee with fixed instruction set and invariant duties, or are more flexible arrangements with perhaps protector/guardian in bakcground to enforce beneficiary rights (sorry … I use UK trust law to express the powers of the delegates).

This is the point where delegates should opine whether it is a principle or practice how strictly the process should be followed. There may be reasons (eg whistle-blower shield provisions) to prevent the source of the hold-up to directly submit a public objection so best to hear all sides of the story.

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any news ? no update since many days

“and will update you all once we feel more certain about future timeframes.” it’s written

until they change their mind last day… :sweat_smile:

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Can you provide any more information on this?

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https://x.com/UniswapFND/status/1796590521072119927

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any news/update about fee switch vote ?

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Our Chinese community also wants to know

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it’s strange to not be updated

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What was the issue that popped up?

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Touching base on this subject, more information has surfaced from the recent Unchained podcast discussing the roles of VCs, founders, and SEC investigations. It’s worth noting that there’s still no update on this forum post regarding the VC who stonewalled the proposal, the reasons behind it, and why exactly the Uniswap Foundation is representing a singular VC voice.

The Uniswap Foundation should maintain complete separation from back-channeling VCs as it poses risks to its integrity and mission. To reiterate, the Foundation’s objective is to enhance the protocol, liquidity layer, and functional purpose, not cater to insiders. Its funding should reflect this purpose, with future funding considerations evaluating how proposals like this one were handled.

Lastly, the Foundation should avoid becoming entangled in extractive VC culture. The primary goal should be to provide value for users and stakeholders by ensuring the protocol operates as an autonomous and sustainable entity.

“The SEC has launched a bunch of investigations into VCs for acting as securities dealers. My own read and legal analysis is that the SEC is absolutely right on that. Basically you have the same VCs who, this is a conversation with a team. It’s hey, the token unlock is happening in two months. [for example] We’re going to give the brand name VC. We’re going to give you tokens at a 50% discount to where we think this will trade in two months. In exchange, you will promote the token. This is hiring the VC as a marketer. The VC is acting as an investment banker in that scenario. Right. They are getting paid a 100% markup to distribute the token. That is acting as a securities dealer. And from an ethical perspective, you’re acting as a pump and dumper very explicitly.”

Quote from Ari Paul, Founder of Blocktower Capital

Excerpt from Laura Shin, Unchained

[https://unchainedcrypto.com/podcast/how-to-figure-out-whether-a-crypto-token-is-worth-its-trading-price/]

awesome idea. fully support it. we need more governance experiments to increase gov participation.

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Widely admitted that the rules (at least for investment contracts) are a poor fit for network tokens (non-equity). See this YouTube on the Gary gambit. The primary roles are
a) information asymmetry … hard to form a “fair” market when insiders have prior / privilege knowledge to counter-parties
b) if its is supposed to be “decentralized” then why have VCs when you can crowd-source the “discount” which is due to perceived risk discount … we can have mechanisms to say auction off “marketing” or distribution rights rather than getting implied endorsement
c) rules on controlling bad actors (rug-pulls, front-running, time-locks) … rather than trying to shoe-horn fit/proper persons and onerous reporting requirements, can there be better mechanism designs ? (eg liquid bonding curves) to create price discovery? … its well known that IPO underwriters underprice the value to get the first day trading “bump”.

Democratisation of financing (and not just for the “sophisticated” bankers) does require rethinking how R&D moves from idea to operations and how to correctly price in the risk factors when doing an exit to community.