Uniswap Deployment - Guideline

Governance-Meta
1

Authors

@alicecorsini, @juanbug

Current UAC members

@alicecorsini, @juanbug, @abdullahumar, @alexduckworth, @frisson

Outline

  • Introduction
  • About UAC
  • Uniswap Deployment
  • Deployment Timeline
  • Financial support and UNI incentives guideline
  • Benefits to Uniswap
  • Frontend options
  • Suggested template for a DAO proposal

Introduction

This guideline is for chains who would like to obtain an official canonical Uniswap v3/v2 deployment on their chain and/or UNI incentives related to it. This post is designed to streamline the process introduced by the Uniswap Revitalisation and Growth program.

About UAC

The Uniswap Accountability Committee is a body elected by the Uniswap DAO to oversee the deployment of Uniswap v2/v3 across various blockchain networks, maintaining proper facilitation of the processes and ensuring everything is conducted transparently and aligned with the community’s interests.

If you’re a prospective chain interested in deploying Uniswap v2/v3 or want support from the Uniswap DAO, feel free to reach out to any of the committee members listed above.

Uniswap Deployment

The Uniswap protocol is owned by the Uniswap DAO. Therefore, teams can request the DAO for its approval on deploying Uniswap v2/v3 on a certain chain.

Having a Uniswap deployment approved by the Uniswap DAO brings several benefits that enhance the legitimacy, adoption, and long-term success of the deployment. These include:

  • Trusted deployment, ​​which can drive higher adoption rates for the protocol on the new chain
  • Audited and battle-tested smart contracts
  • Community support, fostering trust and legitimacy for the deployment on the target chain
  • Alignment with ecosystem goals
  • Collaboration with the Uniswap ecosystem, including introductions to frontend and deployment providers
  • Funding opportunities, including UNI incentives

If you’re interested in getting support on deploying Uniswap v2/v3, please reach out to any of the current UAC members listed above.

Two Important notes:

  • While the DAO controls the deployment process and approves official deployments, Uniswap Labs owns the app.uniswap.org frontend. They are a separate entity and the DAO does not have a say over what chains they add to their front end. On this piece, community frontends have been created and are here to help chains deploy with a frontend.
  • All current Uniswap v3 deployments are on EVM chains. These are straightforward and easily replicable. For non-EVM chains, teams must propose to Uniswap governance their plans and additional requirements (e.g. development efforts and audits) will be requested.

Deployment Timeline

The recommended process for deploying Uniswap v2/v3 is as follows:

  1. Connect and chat with the UAC on your intentions and plans to deploy Uniswap on a certain chain. The UAC will walk you through the entire process, share suggestions and connect you with relevant ecosystem contributors.

  2. Create a forum post detailing the specifics of your chain, including overview, unique value adds, and why Uniswap should deploy. This serves to present the chain to the Uniswap community and to give stakeholders the opportunity to ask any questions.

  3. Deploy the Uniswap v3 and/or v2 contracts, verify on a block explorer native to your chain and transfer ownership to the Uniswap DAO. Include a reference to the smart contracts in the original forum post (from step 2), or comment below that same post with the relevant references and links.

  4. Work out a frontend solution for the deployment. Since anyone can create and fork the Uniswap v2/v3 contracts, one requirement to be considered a DAO-approved deployment is a frontend.
    See below a list of frontend providers that other chains have used in the past, who can also help with correctly deploying the smart contracts. Alternatively, teams can opt for an in-house frontend, independently coordinate to be added to app.uniswap.org or proceed through other providers.

  5. [optional] Teams can request the Uniswap DAO to financially support the costs related with integrations on community frontends. This requires an onchain governance vote, read below for more details.

  6. The deployment is optimistically approved to be an official canonical deployment after one week of correctly deploying the smart contracts, without incidents or community concerns. This means that no onchain governance vote is required to finalise the deployment.
    Note that if you’re requesting financial support on the community frontend integration, a governance vote will be needed to approve the funding.

  7. [optional] Request UNI incentives to bootstrap liquidity and support your deployment. The next section will detail this specific portion.

Financial support and UNI incentives guideline

When deploying Uniswap on a certain chain, the relevant team can request financial support and/or UNI incentives from the DAO. This will require an onchain governance vote. If you request support, the UAC will provide general recommendations on how to best approach this process.

Note that the UAC cannot speak on behalf of the Uniswap delegates, who will ultimately vote on the proposal.

Based on previously-approved Onboarding Packages, here are a few options:

  • Financial support for frontend integration costs. As mentioned above, a frontend is required to be approved as on official deployment. If a team is unable to fund the frontend costs independently, they can request financial support from the DAO to cover for the costs associated with integrating a community frontend.
    Note that the financial support needs to be approved via an onchain governance vote. This process typically requires at least a month from start to finish as it involves a Snapshot vote, followed by an onchain vote.
    If you’re looking for a faster turnaround, you might want to consider independently cover for frontend costs or request a retroactive funding.
  • UNI incentives. Teams can request UNI incentives to bootstrap liquidity and volume on the Uniswap deployments on their chains. Based on 1-year experience of Onboarding Packages, see below a useful guideline.

Note these are previously-approved options, but other kinds of financial support can be discussed with the DAO.

UNI incentives guideline:

  • If you haven’t done it already, connect and chat with the UAC.
  • Work with the Uniswap Growth Program and the @alphagrowth team to structure an incentive program to present to the DAO. The UAC is happy to connect and facilitate.
  • Prepare a DAO Proposal to request UNI incentives. Uniswap has seen both newer, pre-mainnet chains and tenured chains approach the DAO. For this reason, we’re splitting into two categories:
    • Newer Chains - for chains in the early stages or pre-mainnet, we suggest approaching the DAO after working with the Uniswap Growth Program to structure an internal incentive program.
      In terms of amounts, we suggest asking the Uniswap DAO for UNI incentives anywhere from $125k to $250k with typical options being $125k and $250k.
    • Developed Chains - for well-established chains or chains with a robust native ecosystem, we suggest approaching the DAO after working with the Uniswap Growth Program to structure an internal incentive program.
      In terms of amounts, we suggest asking the Uniswap DAO for UNI incentives anywhere from $250k to $1M with typical options being $250k, $500k, $750k and $1M.

While it’s not a strict requirement, pre-committed or pre-approved matching incentives and Protocol Owned Liquidity are factors that make Onboarding Package requests more appealing to Uniswap delegates, who ultimately approve or deny such requests. These incentive matches have ranged from 4:1 to 1:1; feel free to discuss this with the Uniswap Growth Program - as they have supported a handful of teams through this process, can provide specific suggestions.

Ecosystem Benefits

Supporting Uniswap deployments across chains has benefits for the entire ecosystem, including:

  • Increased adoption of the Uniswap protocol and protocol’s usage growth
  • Alignment with ecosystem goals as v4 comes on the roadmap.
  • Accountability, ensuring the deployment team adheres to quality standards in line with the Uniswap brand and maintains its commitments (e.g. matching incentives, POL)
  • (Future) Possible fee switch alignment, with DAO-approved deployments contributing to the overall fees generated by the Uniswap protocol
  • Continued support for ecosystem growth, incentivising users and builders to leverage the Uniswap protocol

Frontend options

A Frontend integration is required to be recognized as official. This can be done in-house or with a frontend provider. Here are some blurbs we received from trusted frontend providers that can also help with smart contract deployments:

  • Oku - Oku is the leading Uniswap v3 frontend deployed across 23 chains boasting 0% fees on swaps and bridge transactions to offer the best rates across every EVM chain. Equipped with features such as limit orders on swaps, LP management, permissionless pool creation and zero-fee on/off ramp to EU and US banks, Oku users can access the leading DeFi protocol with a seamless UX to rival major CEXs like Coinbase and Binance.
  • Reservoir - Reservoir’s frontend is based on the Uniswap Interface, providing access to both V2 & V3 through a familiar, user-friendly UI. Deployments also get automatic integration into Reservoir’s other product, Relay.link, which unlocks cross-chain swaps across 30+ chains (including Solana/Bitcoin), and best-in-class developer tools (Swap API, Swap Widget, Token Data). The Reservoir team is also an active LP, managing over $5MM, and can bootstrap ETH/USDC liquidity on chains that they work with.

The UAC will help facilitate questions including costs for these frontends with prospective chains. If anyone else has such offerings, please reach out to the team.

Suggested template for a DAO proposal

Here is a suggested structure for a forum post detailing the intent to deploy:

  • Overview - summarize the chain and intent
  • About - introduce the relevant chain with its key features, target audience and current ecosystem (assume the reader isn’t familiar with it)
  • Benefits to Uniswap - explain the reasons why Uniswap should be excited about adding your chain as a new target audience/distribution channel
  • Bridges - introduce your native bridge and mention any other bridge providers available on the relevant chain
  • Frontend - List the frontend for the deployment
  • Contracts- Deploy, verify, and transfer ownership of the forked contracts over to the DAO
  • Timeline - Timeline of the deployment and process
  • Incentives and Costs:
    • If you’re asking for the DAO to cover the frontend, please clearly state this.
    • If you’re asking for co-incentives from the DAO, independent of the deployment itself, please clearly outline your proposal and request.
    • For each, we recommend working with the Uniswap Growth Program to structure matching incentives to appeal more to the delegates.
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