Part 1: Descriptive Report (Continued)
Accounting and Financials
The accounting details in this section are up-to-date as of April 14, 2025 and assume a UNI price of $5.35. Also note that all of the account balances, along with their respective inflows and outflows, are cumulative from the establishment of the UAC. The rebalance amounts are based in dollars, so the requested UNI amount from the RFC to the Snapshot to the onchain vote will vary from $UNI fluctuation.
Escrow and Oversight for DAO Programs and Working Groups
From September 2024 until April 2025, there have been a total of 28,459,760 UNI sent out of the Uniswap timelock. Of this total, 550,823 have been for DAO-led programs, all of which have been directly sent to the UAC Primary Wallet. Of the 12 transactions executed through an onchain vote, 10 of these have directed capital to the UAC to escrow, highlighting that the UAC has become the DAO’s go-to entity for payment distribution.
There are multiple benefits of utilizing an intermediary escrow setup. Firstly, it grants the DAO a customary venue for issuing treasury-based UNI upon the execution of an onchain vote. There are often questions around what entity a proposer should direct their capital towards, and the UAC wallet helps create a structure for such organization. The DAO can now distinguish between the treasury as a whole, which by the UTWG has been recommended to be viewed as an issuance vehicle, and operating capital that has been approved for consumption by governance vote.
Better accountability is also implemented when the UAC is able to verify the completion of work prior to conducting disbursements. Of course, an alternative to this is using a streaming service like Sablier to continuously pay a grantee like Tally or Forse, for example. However, since the UAC does not have the ability to liquidate UNI for USDC, it must pay all recipients in UNI tokens. Due to price fluctuations, it’s difficult to pay a vendor the dollar amount that they requested initially over time. Plus, if a third-party streaming service is used, and a grantee does not follow through with their mandate, an onchain vote may be required to suspend the stream, which takes an inordinate amount of time. Plus, some vendors may require a degree of flexibility when meeting deadlines, like was the case with Forse. Manual distributions therefore make it easier for the DAO to manage distribution edge cases and complexities.
Relative to last season, the UAC saw less dollar-denominated inflows, totaling $3.82M, while last season we saw $5.89M worth of inflows. In terms of UNI, 220k less tokens were part of the inflows. However, the total number of inflow transactions increased from 4 to 10. The large disparity in magnitude of inflows was due to the approval of more incentive programs during Q1 - Q3 2024 as part of the Uniswap Revitalization and Growth Program.
The above table only contains months that saw inflows.
Program Account Balances
This section of the report consolidates each Account’s current balance and expenses. Accounts are considered “currently allocated” if their dollar-based budget has been fully disbursed. These accounts will remain present in case the programs associated with them are renewed in the future. There are a total of nine Accounts:
- Incentive Package
- Delegate Compensation
- UAC Payroll/Operations
- Delegate Reward WG
- Uniswap Ecosystem Incentives Initiative
- Tally Grant
- Uniswap Treasury Working Group (UTWG) — Currently Allocated
- Uniswap Growth Program — Currently Allocated
- Forse Grant — Currently Allocated
“Accounts” are effectively the prescribed balances associated with a particular program that the DAO has voted in. Programs are voted in, in terms of dollars—not UNI. Therefore, Accounts fluctuate in their dollar-based balance over time. In certain circumstances, an Account will have more dollar-denominated capital in it than was initially voted, and vice versa if the price of UNI falls. Deviations from the voted dollar price of a program are denoted as either surpluses or deficits. At the end of every UAC Season, we request a topping up of Accounts in a deficit. This allows us to more effectively meet DAO commitments while factoring the volatile nature of UNI.
Active Accounts
Chain Incentive Packages
Following the information from the incentive packages section, this Account is responsible for tracking three types of payments:
- Incentives for distribution
- Distribution partner integration cost
- Front-end integration cost
Oku and Merkl Payments
There are no payables pending for Oku or Merkl integrations. Oku was paid $105k x 2 during Season 3 for Gnosis and Celo integrations. Merkl integration costs for Gnosis and Sonic were waived due to the reasons outlined below.
Note that the dollar amount for the Blast through BSC incentives are 3% more than the base number of incentives in that program. This is because all incentive programs prior to Gnosis allocated additional capital to accommodate for the 3% Merkl distribution cost, which applies to all campaigns. Since Gnosis and Sonic, we have been bundling the incentive cost + the distribution cost into a lump sum so that a $250k request, for example, includes all associated variable fees. In this $250k scenario, the true amount of incentives allocated would be $242.5k.
We negotiated a discount on distribution costs for Merkl last year, where the 3% fees only applied to a certain lot of the incentives. This deal resets annually.
A total of ~$6 million was distributed via the UAC as of January 20, 2025, and a flat 3% fee was charged on the full amount ($180k). The discount meant that the fee model is tiered based on the following distribution numbers:
- 3% on the first $2M ($60k)
- 2.25% on the next $3M ($67.5k)
- 1.5% on the final $1M ($15k)
Hence, the correct total fee charge is $142.5k, so Merkl overcharged by $37.5k. Since we owed Merkl $21.6k for the Gnosis and Sonic integrations (total ~$43.2k), they decided to grant leniency with this fee, leaving our wallet with an excess $5,700.
Accordingly, we reduced the Current Balance by $43,200, but left the wallet UNI amount unchanged since no token flows occurred, giving us a slight surplus.
Chain Incentive Notes
- Sonic cut their incentives short after distributing 40% of the $500k that they promised. In turn, we also cut off our incentives at the 40% mark, allocating only $100k of the allotted $250k. As such, the Current Balance decreased by $150k, leaving a surplus.
- BSC, Blast, and Celo incentives were the only ones that remain unallocated. We are holding on to the BSC balance since we’re in the middle of negotiating a potential incentive match with their team. Celo will be allocated soon since their L2 migration is now done. However, we ended up nulling the remaining 50% of the Blast rewards—the Current Balance was thereby reduced by $257,500, leaving excess capital in the account due to the unallocated UNI.
- Since X Layer didn’t follow through with their POL commitment, we removed $105k (Oku cost) from the Current Balance, leaving a surplus.
No rebalance is required as the Account is in a surplus. The Current Balance of $765k is composed of $515k for BSC and $250k for Celo.
Delegate Compensation
During UAC Season 3, the whole of Cycle 2 of delegate compensation transpired, between September 2024 - end of February 2025. As of April, we are now one month into Cycle 3 of delegate compensation, with disbursements for March having been made at the start of April to 15 qualified candidates.
Note that the total outflows for Cycle 2 are higher than that of Cycle 3 due to the reduction of the cohort from 16 to 15 candidates. Plus, since this is a continual program, excess capital from previous cycles simply gets recycled for the subsequent cycle(s).
A rebalance of $29,247 is required for this Account.
UAC Payroll/Operations
The total outflows for this Account for Season 3 have so far amounted to $137,736. Once the month of April concludes, this number will be finalized.
Between the months of October and March, the total UAC payroll amounted to $132k, an average of $22k per month for the team of five members. Some members completed overtime work, and so we expect the aggregated amount of payroll expense for these months to be $155k, or $25.8k per month. Based on the allotted monthly payroll budget of $30k, this account remains at a dollar-based surplus. Note that overtime pay does not get distributed until the completion of a given season and will be disbursed at the end of April as Season 4 gets underway.
Other operational expenses amounted to $5,736, of which $5k was used to pay for a 12-month SafeNotes subscription, and the rest was used for purchasing the new “uac.eth” ENS domain.
We expect once we factor in the overtime for the last season, a surplus would still remain. Again, note that this balance will have some variance due to April payables not being accounted for, but regardless, we expect a slight surplus.
No rebalance is required due to the existing surplus.
Delegate Reward WG
This Account was opened during the planning phase for Cycle 1 of the delegate compensation program. Over the past two seasons this Account has been utilized to cover costs associated with overhead around planning and operating the delegate rewards program. Between October 2024 and April 2025, $15.6k has been used from this Account.
No rebalancing will be needed for this Account due to the present surplus.
Uniswap Ecosystem Incentives Initiative (UEII)
In concert with the Uniswap Growth Program, the UEII was voted in during October 2025 as well. The above section regarding expense ratios and negotiations with target chains has made this program more pertinent as it actively incentivizes the team members to seek lucrative liquidity deals with other protocols and DAOs. So far, the program has utilized 41% of its budget based on active Optimism and zkSync campaigns. These disbursements were paid out in February & April 2025.
A rebalance of $87,942 is required for this Account.
Tally Grant
A vote elected to fund Tally operations and development between Q1 2025 - Q4 2026, spreading a total $500k across 8 even disbursements. The UAC pays Tally at the start of each quarter based on their plan for the upcoming quarter, along with progress and upkeep status on the previous quarter. Two $62.5k payments have so far been made out to Tally.
The Tally communication thread is available here.
The original proposal from Tally indicated that the UAC would act as the mediator for making sure their Account is balanced correctly so that liabilities may properly be covered:
A rebalance of $155,875 is required for this Account.
Currently Allocated Accounts
Uniswap Treasury Working Group (UTWG)
A total of $60k was allotted to the UTWG, and all of its liabilities have been paid due to the delivery of the working group’s report in December. During Season 2, the UAC paid the four teams composing the UTWG an equal $7200 each. The UTWG report is hosted on a UAC-operated Notion page that we’re open to utilizing for future research as well.
This Account has covered its budget and is therefore fully allocated, with a surplus 1,092 UNI.
Uniswap Growth Program
One of the shortcomings of Season 2 was that there was not enough outbound communication with target chains and related partners, nor was there a concrete marketing initiative to make users aware of the incentive campaigns—that’s why the growth program was instituted in Q3, with a 6-month trial period.
The upfront budget request from this proposal was as follows:
The entire dollar amount was disbursed to the AlphaGrowth team upon passing of the proposal.
This Account has covered its budget and is therefore fully allocated, with a surplus 1,530 UNI.
Forse Grant
The Forse team was tasked with conducting a retroactive analysis of some of the incentive campaigns that the UAC put into effect—in particular for Base, Arbitrum, Blast, and Scroll.
Their team has provided interim analyses over the past couple of community calls, with their final deliverable and dashboards available to access here. As per the initial proposal, $60k was paid to their team in March ‘25.
This Account at time of payment was at a deficit and is now ended. A rebalance of $7,078 is required for this Account.
Accounting Summary
- The total current balance of all Accounts equates to $1,984,414.
- The sum of the UNI in the Primary and Incentives wallets is 431,478 UNI.
Three of the Accounts have been fully utilized for now, but we will continue to keep track of them in case programs associated with those budgets get renewed in the future.
We are looking to request a rebalance for active and fully allocated Accounts. This is to ensure that commitments for those Accounts are properly met or zeroed out once they have ended. Accordingly, the below table sums up how much we are requesting for a rebalance overall.
Discretionary Budget
A Snapshot proposal passed with the onchain quorum threshold of 40M UNI votes to issue the UAC with capabilities to spend surplus funds for high impact incentive campaigns.
Proposal summary:
- Funds would be issued via internal unanimous UAC votes on a case-by-case basis.
- Ensures alignment with Uniswap DAO goals and enables quicker execution of opportunities.
- Reduces approval time from ~4 weeks to just a few days, pending UAC internal vote.
- Only funds previously allocated to the UAC multisig would be used.
- Spending is limited to when the surplus exceeds 150% of the Current Balance.
- Example: With a balance of $706,667, surplus must exceed $1,060,000 to be eligible.
- This maintains a 1.5x buffer to account for price fluctuations and protect existing payables.
- Discretionary use is capped at $250,000 per incentive program.
The impetus for this proposal was a last-minute campaign that the EtherFi team was running near the tail end of the Holidays. Unfortunately, this never fully transpired since the DAO was slightly late to the commitment regardless of the prompt discretionary proposal. As of April 2025, the surplus is not large enough to activate discretionary funding, however, there may be a future scenario where this will come in handy.
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Continue reading for Part 2: RFC