Uniswap’s First Governance Proposal Led by Dharma Set to Be Approved

Uniswap is undergoing its first governance proposal, one that was initiated by the Dharma DeFi platform on Oct. 13. The vote aims to reduce the proposal submission and quorum values by implementing threshold values of 3 million UNI and 30 million UNI, respectively. The proposal description claims that the lower thresholds will make governance participation more democratic, as more people will be able to submit a proposed change. It states that this will help foster a vibrant governance process. The voting period will end on Oct. 19.

Univalent voted "for" on proposal 1 by @NadavAHollander https://t.co/VRiiZifDJR

Quorum is 1.45m votes short.

If you have not yet, please vote "for" via https://t.co/nOHBRjumWs

Proposed changes;

– Quorum decreases from 4% to 3%
– Proposal threshold decreases from 1% to 0.3% pic.twitter.com/JE1jUH3lhW

— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) October 17, 2020

Yearn.finance founder Andre Cronje has also entered the discussion, asking for UNI holders to vote in favor of the change. Currently, the overwhelming majority of voters are on board, with over 39.5 million voting “for” the change. Approximately 683,000 participants have voted against the change.

Controversy Surrounds the Vote

However, not everyone appreciates the idea of the reduced threshold values. The governance proposal, which Dharma initiated, has been subject to the criticism that it may favor whales. Community members have suggested that the change would favor large UNI holders like Dharma and Gauntlet.

Because my priority is to preserve the integrity of the governance, not to pass proposals quickly.

Any proposal can be passed using an autonomous proposal (https://t.co/06gbE5gYtA), so there is no need to lower the limit (we should increase it)

— Agustín Aguilar (@Agusx1211) October 14, 2020

Pine.finance founder Agustín Aguilar has voted against the change, saying that his priority was to preserve the integrity of governance.

Uniswap Remains the No. 1 DEX

Uniswap launched its UNI governance token on Sept. 16, soon after the Sushiswap fork began drawing users away from it. It did well in terms of use, if not price, following the launch. The team’s decision to airdrop 400 UNI tokens to previous users widely lauded.

It is by far the most popular DEX in use, with $2.6 billion locked in, according to DeFi Pulse. Statistics from Dune Analytics also show that monthly volume for Uniswap was $15.3 billion in October — more than what Coinbase recorded in the same month. Uniswap also has the highest number of users, at over 428,000.