Controversy reined within Uniswap’s fledgling government as a result of the vote as there was a protocol switch last month.
Voting in favor of the Uniswap governance mechanism has failed to garner the needed amount of votes. It intended to lower the barrier for passing protocols.
Despite attracting the whooping support of 98% of the total votes cast, the first governance vote for Uniswap failed to pass. 40 million votes was the threshold required to gain approval, but it fell around 1% short.
Uniswap Governance Voting Fails to Reach Quorum by a Narrow Margin
The vote, which ended earlier today, nearly passed since Uniswap’s users favored the motion staked 39,596,759 tokens. Users who were against the motion just staked 696,857 tokens. Showing that those in favor were just a whisker away from attaining the 40 million UNI tokens necessary for approving the protocol.
Dharma, a major UNI token holder as well as open-source lending protocol, put forward the motion. So, most UNI votes favoring the proposal emanated from Dharma and another supporting company Gauntlet.
At present, only entities holding at least 1% of UNI tokens in circulation equated to 10 million UNI (worth $30 million) so as to surpass the 40 million total votes (worth $130 million) threshold. Dharma’s submission intended to reduce the threshold so that the amount of token wouldn’t be 10 million UNI ($30 million) but 3 million UNI ($9 million).
Disappointing Outcome for the Community
Today, Dharma co-founder and CEO Nadav Hollander responded concerning the vote’s performance in a tweet.
A disappointing outcome that demonstrates the impetus for the proposal in the first-place:
Despite the vote having 85+% turnout (!), >95% support, with 272 voting FOR and 48 voting AGAINST, the vote still failed.
There is a silver lining, though… https://t.co/iXZgwxC5da
— Nadav Hollander (@NadavAHollander) October 19, 2020
Critics within the DeFi space, on the other hand, didn’t welcome Dharma’s proposal arguing out that the two biggest supporting companies would on their own get the number of tokens required to reach a quorum. The argument might be valid since, in a just single address, Dharma currently controls 15 million UNI.
Agustin Aguilar, a crypto developer, hailed the outcome of the vote, saying that the voter abstinence signals the amount of opposition the proposal attracts.
https://twitter.com/Agusx1211/status/1317956235963006976?s=20
Nevertheless, Hollander views the outcome “healthy” for Uniswap as it increases the voting stake from 47 million UNI to 74 million UNI (almost by 57%).
Control over the Network Diluted
Controversy reined within Uniswap’s fledgling government as a result of the vote since there was a protocol switch just the previous month. Dharma intends to utilize Uniswap’s treasury funds to a couple of airdrop UNI to its users and users using Uniswap integrated apps. Last month’s Uniswap’s airdrop where all protocol’s users were rewarded UNI tokens worth a few thousand dollars didn’t reach Dharma.
Together with fellow supporter Gauntlet, Dharma would have influenced the network into accepting any proposal it needed to pass if the proposal to lower the barrier to entry passed. Fortunately, other users have more UNI eligible for voting, ruling out Dharma’s notion of controlling the network.