Uniswap is critical infrastructure for a self-sovereign Internet, providing the liquidity layer for a flourishing world of tokens representing governance participation, community membership, the ability to participate in protocols, “real world” assets and more. It is critical financial infrastructure - providing a permissionless, credibly neutral alternative to the NYSE or SWIFT. It is an enabler of entrepreneurship, providing a liquidity platform for builders creating protocols and applications around the world.
We founded the Uniswap Foundation because we want to ensure that Uniswap is accessible for anyone in the world to leverage as permissionless financial and technological infrastructure for a long time.
How do we make that happen? A robust, diverse, and values-aligned ecosystem.
A strong ecosystem is a competitive edge. It expands a Protocol’s accessibility, increases its resiliency, and enables it to thrive in the face of ruthless competitive and market environments. It means more product and engineering talent driving the Protocol forward, into new markets with better user experience. It means values-aligned delegates who are able to thoughtfully weigh the tradeoffs of governance proposals. It means more serendipity, collaboration, and inspiration.
Looking across the crypto landscape it’s easy to see ecosystem strength as a competitive advantage. Ethereum is probably the best example. If Consensys and Ethereum’s earliest contributors were still the only teams building on and for Ethereum, it's possible that almost none of us would be here. Instead, Ethereum is one of the best places to build blockchain-based protocols and applications.
The UF is building the Uniswap ecosystem.
How are we doing that exactly?
1. Growing core Protocol metrics, specifically driving net new order flow to strengthen the Protocol flywheel.
Over the next year, this looks like the development of a robust hooks development platform which broadens the pipeline of developers onto Uniswap and diversifies the kinds of things Uniswap is able to do.
In the long term, this is 100ks+ of hook and application developers speaking to different use cases (crypto-native to RWA, building new financial primitives) and users globally, all while being able to generate a return for themselves.
2. Building a pipeline for innovation on the Protocol, with the goal of enhancing the experience of swappers and LPs.
Over the next year, this means launching the TL;DR Fellowship and Conference, and creating working groups to apply cutting-edge research across MEV and other relevant areas directly to Uniswap.
In the long term, this means Uniswap is the default home for the world’s top crypto/DeFi researchers and academics to build POCs and iterate upon mechanisms to improve the experience of key DeFi stakeholders.
3. Aligning incentives for stakeholders with long-term interests of the Protocol, turning Uniswap into a cockroach.
Over the short term, this means two things: the development of realistic mechanisms to effectively capture Protocol value created and distribute it to stakeholders, and bringing stakeholders together to build trust and context IRL.
In the long term, this means the alignment of long-term interests of core stakeholder teams with the Protocol to weather future volatility and competition.
This approach will serve to increase Uniswap’s moat over time while ensuring it can adapt as tides change.
Below, we discuss what we’ve done so far, and how we plan to accomplish our goals in the future. Thank you for your support, as always. We wouldn’t be here without you. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to work with you in the coming years.
Below, we provide a summary of what the UF Grants program and our team directly has accomplished over the last year.
Growth
Innovation
Governance & Community
First, we want to provide an overview of our team:
Devin Walsh, Executive Director & UF Co-Founder
Ken Ng, Head of Applied Research & UF Co-Founder
Elika Mahdavi, COO
Raphaela Sapire, Head of Growth
Tyllen Bicakcic, Head of Developer Relations
Erin Koen, Head of Governance
Federico Landini, Grants Manager
We’re also grateful to work with a number of contributors who are making an outsized impact.
Ben Basche, Hooks Strategy
Bethany Crystal, Grants Strategy
YJ, Grants Committee
Leander Capuozzo, Brand Experience
Juliet Chung, Grants Administration
Below I want to summarize some of the work our team has done outside of grants:
Growth & Innovation
Governance
Regulatory
We will continue to take a targeted approach to growing the Uniswap ecosystem, investing our capital and resources to fund and support projects and teams who will drive growth and strengthening of the ecosystem.
Below we cover several initiatives currently in flight, and upcoming over the next few months.
Through the end of 2023, we plan to:
Into 2024 and beyond, we want to offer insight into how we’re thinking about achieving our big goals.
1. In the realm of growth, we’re building an ecosystem of 100ks+ of hook and application developers speaking to different use cases and users globally. This includes:
2. In the realm of innovation, we’re building a pipeline for the world’s top crypto/DeFi researchers to build POCs and iterate upon mechanisms to improve the experience of key DeFi stakeholders on Uniswap.
3. In the realm of governance, we’re working towards an alignment of interests between stakeholders and the Protocol, turning Uniswap into a cockroach.
We are requesting $62.37M in funds today.
As a reminder, in our initial proposal, we broke our funding request into two tranches. The reason for breaking our funding into two tranches was to allow for the UF to finalize the completion of its legal entity, and to formally receive non-profit 501(c)4 status from the IRS (and thus receive clarity on tax implications), prior to receiving the larger portion of funds. We are pleased to have received that status in Spring of this year.
Tranche 2 Amount
Last year in our Tranche 1 of funding, we requested 2,547,002 UNI with the goal of receiving $20M. However the price of UNI decreased over the 11 days between our request and when it hit our wallet, decreasing the UNI’s value to $17.3M.
We are requesting the remainder of funds plus a 10% buffer, $62.37M, today.
Grants

Operations

In the discussions below, note that in addition to the 13.7% price decrease between governance proposal and receipt of funds, the UF suffered a $1.29M capital loss in the 6 weeks following the receipt of our funds as we dollar-cost-averaged 1,992,000 UNI into cash and stablecoins to fund operations and grants. Over this period, our average UNI execution price was $6.40, down from $7.05 on the day of receipt. We split the impact of this capital loss across operations (20%, $259K impact) and grants (80%, $1.04M impact) budgets, to match the % split of ops and grants in our $74M budget.
Grants
Having spent ~$5.7M on grants over the last year, and taking into account the aforementioned $1.04M capital loss, the UF has $53.2M in grants capital remaining to disburse.

Projected Team Growth
Over the next year, we plan to grow our Growth & Research, Grants, and Technology teams in order to realize our goals. Specifically, we plan to:

Operations

Additional Notes
Over the last year, the UF has spent $3.15M on ops and $5.4M in grants. We offer a few comments on these amounts below:
Previously the UF had stated that we would receive governance approval via an off-chain vote for grants larger than $2M. In order to allow the UF team to move quickly and focus our resources on grant-making and management, we plan to remove that requirement with our Tranche 2 of funds.
Our Treasury Diversification policy is designed to prioritize capital preservation and risk mitigation. We also maintain a portion of our assets in UNI to offer as part of a compensation package to our employees, to align interests with that of the Uniswap ecosystem.
Tranche 2 funds ($56.7M) will be split between Operations and Grants. Below we detail our methodology for diversifying our assets within these two categories.
For Operational funds, we will:
For Grants funds, we we will:
This plan aligns our financial strategy with our core objectives, minimizing risk from market volatility to safeguard the foundation’s operations and grant-making commitments.
We’re excited to discuss this proposal with you and answer questions during a Twitter Spaces on Monday, 10/2. Watch for more information on timing at our Twitter, @UniswapFnd.
We will post the governance vote to approve this second tranche of funds next Wednesday, 10/4.
To get a more comprehensive review on our work thus far, take a look at the blog posts we’ve written over the last year:
Thank you to Jesse Walden, Hart Lambur, Alexis Gauba, and Julia Rosenberg for their support as advisors and multi-sig signers over the last year.
Uniswap is critical infrastructure for a self-sovereign Internet, providing the liquidity layer for a flourishing world of tokens representing governance participation, community membership, the ability to participate in protocols, “real world” assets and more. It is critical financial infrastructure - providing a permissionless, credibly neutral alternative to the NYSE or SWIFT. It is an enabler of entrepreneurship, providing a liquidity platform for builders creating protocols and applications around the world.
We founded the Uniswap Foundation because we want to ensure that Uniswap is accessible for anyone in the world to leverage as permissionless financial and technological infrastructure for a long time.
How do we make that happen? A robust, diverse, and values-aligned ecosystem.
A strong ecosystem is a competitive edge. It expands a Protocol’s accessibility, increases its resiliency, and enables it to thrive in the face of ruthless competitive and market environments. It means more product and engineering talent driving the Protocol forward, into new markets with better user experience. It means values-aligned delegates who are able to thoughtfully weigh the tradeoffs of governance proposals. It means more serendipity, collaboration, and inspiration.
Looking across the crypto landscape it’s easy to see ecosystem strength as a competitive advantage. Ethereum is probably the best example. If Consensys and Ethereum’s earliest contributors were still the only teams building on and for Ethereum, it's possible that almost none of us would be here. Instead, Ethereum is one of the best places to build blockchain-based protocols and applications.
The UF is building the Uniswap ecosystem.
How are we doing that exactly?
1. Growing core Protocol metrics, specifically driving net new order flow to strengthen the Protocol flywheel.
Over the next year, this looks like the development of a robust hooks development platform which broadens the pipeline of developers onto Uniswap and diversifies the kinds of things Uniswap is able to do.
In the long term, this is 100ks+ of hook and application developers speaking to different use cases (crypto-native to RWA, building new financial primitives) and users globally, all while being able to generate a return for themselves.
2. Building a pipeline for innovation on the Protocol, with the goal of enhancing the experience of swappers and LPs.
Over the next year, this means launching the TL;DR Fellowship and Conference, and creating working groups to apply cutting-edge research across MEV and other relevant areas directly to Uniswap.
In the long term, this means Uniswap is the default home for the world’s top crypto/DeFi researchers and academics to build POCs and iterate upon mechanisms to improve the experience of key DeFi stakeholders.
3. Aligning incentives for stakeholders with long-term interests of the Protocol, turning Uniswap into a cockroach.
Over the short term, this means two things: the development of realistic mechanisms to effectively capture Protocol value created and distribute it to stakeholders, and bringing stakeholders together to build trust and context IRL.
In the long term, this means the alignment of long-term interests of core stakeholder teams with the Protocol to weather future volatility and competition.
This approach will serve to increase Uniswap’s moat over time while ensuring it can adapt as tides change.
Below, we discuss what we’ve done so far, and how we plan to accomplish our goals in the future. Thank you for your support, as always. We wouldn’t be here without you. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to work with you in the coming years.
Below, we provide a summary of what the UF Grants program and our team directly has accomplished over the last year.
Growth
Innovation
Governance & Community
First, we want to provide an overview of our team:
Devin Walsh, Executive Director & UF Co-Founder
Ken Ng, Head of Applied Research & UF Co-Founder
Elika Mahdavi, COO
Raphaela Sapire, Head of Growth
Tyllen Bicakcic, Head of Developer Relations
Erin Koen, Head of Governance
Federico Landini, Grants Manager
We’re also grateful to work with a number of contributors who are making an outsized impact.
Ben Basche, Hooks Strategy
Bethany Crystal, Grants Strategy
YJ, Grants Committee
Leander Capuozzo, Brand Experience
Juliet Chung, Grants Administration
Below I want to summarize some of the work our team has done outside of grants:
Growth & Innovation
Governance
Regulatory
We will continue to take a targeted approach to growing the Uniswap ecosystem, investing our capital and resources to fund and support projects and teams who will drive growth and strengthening of the ecosystem.
Below we cover several initiatives currently in flight, and upcoming over the next few months.
Through the end of 2023, we plan to:
Into 2024 and beyond, we want to offer insight into how we’re thinking about achieving our big goals.
1. In the realm of growth, we’re building an ecosystem of 100ks+ of hook and application developers speaking to different use cases and users globally. This includes:
2. In the realm of innovation, we’re building a pipeline for the world’s top crypto/DeFi researchers to build POCs and iterate upon mechanisms to improve the experience of key DeFi stakeholders on Uniswap.
3. In the realm of governance, we’re working towards an alignment of interests between stakeholders and the Protocol, turning Uniswap into a cockroach.
We are requesting $62.37M in funds today.
As a reminder, in our initial proposal, we broke our funding request into two tranches. The reason for breaking our funding into two tranches was to allow for the UF to finalize the completion of its legal entity, and to formally receive non-profit 501(c)4 status from the IRS (and thus receive clarity on tax implications), prior to receiving the larger portion of funds. We are pleased to have received that status in Spring of this year.
Tranche 2 Amount
Last year in our Tranche 1 of funding, we requested 2,547,002 UNI with the goal of receiving $20M. However the price of UNI decreased over the 11 days between our request and when it hit our wallet, decreasing the UNI’s value to $17.3M.
We are requesting the remainder of funds plus a 10% buffer, $62.37M, today.
Grants

Operations

In the discussions below, note that in addition to the 13.7% price decrease between governance proposal and receipt of funds, the UF suffered a $1.29M capital loss in the 6 weeks following the receipt of our funds as we dollar-cost-averaged 1,992,000 UNI into cash and stablecoins to fund operations and grants. Over this period, our average UNI execution price was $6.40, down from $7.05 on the day of receipt. We split the impact of this capital loss across operations (20%, $259K impact) and grants (80%, $1.04M impact) budgets, to match the % split of ops and grants in our $74M budget.
Grants
Having spent ~$5.7M on grants over the last year, and taking into account the aforementioned $1.04M capital loss, the UF has $53.2M in grants capital remaining to disburse.

Projected Team Growth
Over the next year, we plan to grow our Growth & Research, Grants, and Technology teams in order to realize our goals. Specifically, we plan to:

Operations

Additional Notes
Over the last year, the UF has spent $3.15M on ops and $5.4M in grants. We offer a few comments on these amounts below:
Previously the UF had stated that we would receive governance approval via an off-chain vote for grants larger than $2M. In order to allow the UF team to move quickly and focus our resources on grant-making and management, we plan to remove that requirement with our Tranche 2 of funds.
Our Treasury Diversification policy is designed to prioritize capital preservation and risk mitigation. We also maintain a portion of our assets in UNI to offer as part of a compensation package to our employees, to align interests with that of the Uniswap ecosystem.
Tranche 2 funds ($56.7M) will be split between Operations and Grants. Below we detail our methodology for diversifying our assets within these two categories.
For Operational funds, we will:
For Grants funds, we we will:
This plan aligns our financial strategy with our core objectives, minimizing risk from market volatility to safeguard the foundation’s operations and grant-making commitments.
We’re excited to discuss this proposal with you and answer questions during a Twitter Spaces on Monday, 10/2. Watch for more information on timing at our Twitter, @UniswapFnd.
We will post the governance vote to approve this second tranche of funds next Wednesday, 10/4.
To get a more comprehensive review on our work thus far, take a look at the blog posts we’ve written over the last year:
Thank you to Jesse Walden, Hart Lambur, Alexis Gauba, and Julia Rosenberg for their support as advisors and multi-sig signers over the last year.
Thank you very much :fire:
Thank you very much :fire:
@Naught Charlie from Agora here. Appreciate your thoughtful message, you're right, even tho Agora's open-sourced, I've definitely dropped the ball on comms and reporting. We will strive to be more active going forward there, and I'd love to get your feedback along the way.
Thank you Erin and Devin for posting the metrics here:
@Naught Charlie from Agora here. Appreciate your thoughtful message, you're right, even tho Agora's open-sourced, I've definitely dropped the ball on comms and reporting. We will strive to be more active going forward there, and I'd love to get your feedback along the way.
Thank you Erin and Devin for posting the metrics here:
During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power.
Additionally - I agree with the stale delegate problem that you've pointed out, the lack of active participation both lowers the quality of discussions as well as it robs the opportunity from other contributors in the ecosystem who are eager to participate.
There's still much more to do in both governance and general ecosystem growth, and we're pretty excited about UF's vision of how it all drives towards building a robust and values-aligned ecosystem to ultimately grow the Uniswap Protocol.
Thanks for your answer. Keep up the good work! :muscle:
how about $0 and go straight to jail :joy:
Aside from Oku Trade - is there any insight as to where the other grants went to specifically and whether these had any tangible benefits for the uniswap ecosystem over the past 12 months?
edit: - missed the wave 1/2/3 links above.
I don't believe $60m is suitable for 1 year. Perhaps when/if the fee switch is turned on this can help to divert some funds to the Foundation.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this proposal, and believe the Uniswap Foundation is providing the seeds of future growth.
First I believe it is healthy to air out my own conflictions on the economics of it all, the tiny nagging voice in my head:
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this proposal, and believe the Uniswap Foundation is providing the seeds of future growth.
First I believe it is healthy to air out my own conflictions on the economics of it all, the tiny nagging voice in my head:
As a liquidity provider for the main UNI pair I have been slowly disheartened over the past few years. I have looked forward to a fee switch even though it hits the % fee's I would receive. Why? Because I believe a DAO can only work if it is a sustainable organization, meaning that it is deriving its funding from the protocol; not at the detriment of its relatively smaller governance holders (ex. Nouns fork, and liquidity inflationary provisions seen on most protocols). I feel guilty writing this, as I want to hold my breath and hope for something to change in the next few years. However, I do admit frustration when I see that the fee switch cannot be figured out due to uncertainty; but then see Paradigm supported Friend.tech have no issues with collecting fee's right out of the gate.
I don't mean to put a damper on all the work Uniswap Foundation has done so far. I am excited to see what this next tranche means. I just am tired of all the carrot and stick waving. Everytime I see a proposal I just imagine my full range Uni LP eating the cost, smaller fees being attained due to individuals cashing out with narrow LP ranges, and a few individuals getting disbursements without a worry of the impact on future sustainability and smaller holders. All the while not getting a voice to actually vote with the Uni LP.
I have no doubt this proposal will pass regardless of what I say. So here is some feedback of the proposal provided:
TL;DR conference:
Start small, perhaps have it as a conference that coincides with another in close proximity. Discount for conference goers of the other conference, vice versa. Provide specific value adds to the other conference, while having own messaging and vision.
Tacklebox
Great idea, and thought this was a great opportunity to explore innovation in a more concise way. I can see this growing into its own bigger thing! Tackle Boxing on lake/pond retreat; fishing in the think tank.
Agora
The follow through with this was not very good. It created excitement initially with the idea that UNI tokens would be reallocated to more active governance participants. From what I observed the reallocation did not happen, or was not documented/communicated well. The NFT invitation incentivised mainly localised delegates who already were actively involved.
On a separate note: why does Dharma HQ still have 2.26 million delegated to them (5.64% quorum)/ are large VC's aware of where the allocations have been delegated to? There are many such cases of inactive delegations, shouldn't these be more aligned with active developers/participants/LPers etc? Where is there an attestation of where these delegations should/could go.
Stakeholders
What is the Uniswap Foundation's definition of a stakeholder? The word is used many times throughout the proposal. Is it those that have received grants? If its grantee's or developers what is the retention rate of the UNI going out to these stakeholders i.e. are they holding the stake? Are stakeholders those who received UNI delegation from Venture capital without having personal stake in?
Value
I understand wanting more allocation since UNI prices went down after the last allocation. This happening is more of a byproduct of UNI as a mechanism of funding being unsustainable i.e. the thumb of supply unlocked pressing upon diminishing demand. On the other side would the Uniswap Foundation give back allocation if prices were to go up?
Perhaps a better way of providing grants would be to provide grants in the form of governance delegation that slowly unlocks over x amount of years and only if actively voting/participating in governance. Better alignment than giving out grants for projects that end up not having a sticky user base/one off data analytic report. What is the incentive to keep UNI as a grantee if you know the funding is coming from your own holdings?
Good luck to the Uniswap Foundation; my two cents from a tiny voice
Hey Devin and the rest of the UF team, thanks for this detailed summary of your work and vision for the future.
Alice here, DAO member, Uniswap liquidity provider and Web3 builder. I really like your vision for future works to continue growing the ecosystem and I have two follow-up questions on that:
Hey Devin and the rest of the UF team, thanks for this detailed summary of your work and vision for the future.
Alice here, DAO member, Uniswap liquidity provider and Web3 builder. I really like your vision for future works to continue growing the ecosystem and I have two follow-up questions on that:
Is continued support for grant recipients something you are doing/plan to do? I think the work you are doing on onboarding new developers via hackathons and funding new projects is key for the ecosystem's growth. But, first-time "founders" often have a hard time navigating the challenges of going from PoC (hackathon project or MVP project) to a successful product. In the start-up space, accelerator and mentorship programs exist to address this issue and guide founders beyond the initial idea toward the creation of a sustainable project. I think having a light version of this for UF grant recipients and hookathon winners may help the community to create products that have an impact on the growth of the Uniswap ecosystem. To some extents, this is what Consensys did in Ethereum's early days to support products like MetaMask, Gnosis and Infura in their early days. Are you/do you plan to leverage your expertise and connections with industry leaders to continuously support grant recipients/hookathon winners?
Is collaboration with non-Web3 projects something you are considering? I see you are extensively collaborating with players in the Web3 ecosystem and that's great. But, since this is a 3/4-years-long plan, I'm wondering if there's a plan to both onboard "fresh ecosystem workforce" and to leverage other technologies to grow the Uniswap ecosystem. For example, I think a collaboration with something like Replit may be a strategic move as it could help developers write Web3-safe code (e.g. a sort of "autocorrect" with best practices for smart contract developers), while enabling the UF to access a large community of Web2 developers. Is this something you are considering for the longer term?
Thanks for your answers and thanks again for your work 💪
Also, big fan of your initiative to bring delegates together IRL!
@Naught Charlie from Agora here. Appreciate your thoughtful message, you're right, even tho Agora's open-sourced, I've definitely dropped the ball on comms and reporting. We will strive to be more active going forward there, and I'd love to get your feedback along the way.
Thank you Erin and Devin for posting the metrics here:
@Naught Charlie from Agora here. Appreciate your thoughtful message, you're right, even tho Agora's open-sourced, I've definitely dropped the ball on comms and reporting. We will strive to be more active going forward there, and I'd love to get your feedback along the way.
Thank you Erin and Devin for posting the metrics here:
During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power.
Additionally - I agree with the stale delegate problem that you've pointed out, the lack of active participation both lowers the quality of discussions as well as it robs the opportunity from other contributors in the ecosystem who are eager to participate.
There's still much more to do in both governance and general ecosystem growth, and we're pretty excited about UF's vision of how it all drives towards building a robust and values-aligned ecosystem to ultimately grow the Uniswap Protocol.
Thanks for your answer. Keep up the good work! :muscle:
how about $0 and go straight to jail :joy:
Aside from Oku Trade - is there any insight as to where the other grants went to specifically and whether these had any tangible benefits for the uniswap ecosystem over the past 12 months?
edit: - missed the wave 1/2/3 links above.
I don't believe $60m is suitable for 1 year. Perhaps when/if the fee switch is turned on this can help to divert some funds to the Foundation.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this proposal, and believe the Uniswap Foundation is providing the seeds of future growth.
First I believe it is healthy to air out my own conflictions on the economics of it all, the tiny nagging voice in my head:
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this proposal, and believe the Uniswap Foundation is providing the seeds of future growth.
First I believe it is healthy to air out my own conflictions on the economics of it all, the tiny nagging voice in my head:
As a liquidity provider for the main UNI pair I have been slowly disheartened over the past few years. I have looked forward to a fee switch even though it hits the % fee's I would receive. Why? Because I believe a DAO can only work if it is a sustainable organization, meaning that it is deriving its funding from the protocol; not at the detriment of its relatively smaller governance holders (ex. Nouns fork, and liquidity inflationary provisions seen on most protocols). I feel guilty writing this, as I want to hold my breath and hope for something to change in the next few years. However, I do admit frustration when I see that the fee switch cannot be figured out due to uncertainty; but then see Paradigm supported Friend.tech have no issues with collecting fee's right out of the gate.
I don't mean to put a damper on all the work Uniswap Foundation has done so far. I am excited to see what this next tranche means. I just am tired of all the carrot and stick waving. Everytime I see a proposal I just imagine my full range Uni LP eating the cost, smaller fees being attained due to individuals cashing out with narrow LP ranges, and a few individuals getting disbursements without a worry of the impact on future sustainability and smaller holders. All the while not getting a voice to actually vote with the Uni LP.
I have no doubt this proposal will pass regardless of what I say. So here is some feedback of the proposal provided:
TL;DR conference:
Start small, perhaps have it as a conference that coincides with another in close proximity. Discount for conference goers of the other conference, vice versa. Provide specific value adds to the other conference, while having own messaging and vision.
Tacklebox
Great idea, and thought this was a great opportunity to explore innovation in a more concise way. I can see this growing into its own bigger thing! Tackle Boxing on lake/pond retreat; fishing in the think tank.
Agora
The follow through with this was not very good. It created excitement initially with the idea that UNI tokens would be reallocated to more active governance participants. From what I observed the reallocation did not happen, or was not documented/communicated well. The NFT invitation incentivised mainly localised delegates who already were actively involved.
On a separate note: why does Dharma HQ still have 2.26 million delegated to them (5.64% quorum)/ are large VC's aware of where the allocations have been delegated to? There are many such cases of inactive delegations, shouldn't these be more aligned with active developers/participants/LPers etc? Where is there an attestation of where these delegations should/could go.
Stakeholders
What is the Uniswap Foundation's definition of a stakeholder? The word is used many times throughout the proposal. Is it those that have received grants? If its grantee's or developers what is the retention rate of the UNI going out to these stakeholders i.e. are they holding the stake? Are stakeholders those who received UNI delegation from Venture capital without having personal stake in?
Value
I understand wanting more allocation since UNI prices went down after the last allocation. This happening is more of a byproduct of UNI as a mechanism of funding being unsustainable i.e. the thumb of supply unlocked pressing upon diminishing demand. On the other side would the Uniswap Foundation give back allocation if prices were to go up?
Perhaps a better way of providing grants would be to provide grants in the form of governance delegation that slowly unlocks over x amount of years and only if actively voting/participating in governance. Better alignment than giving out grants for projects that end up not having a sticky user base/one off data analytic report. What is the incentive to keep UNI as a grantee if you know the funding is coming from your own holdings?
Good luck to the Uniswap Foundation; my two cents from a tiny voice
Hey Devin and the rest of the UF team, thanks for this detailed summary of your work and vision for the future.
Alice here, DAO member, Uniswap liquidity provider and Web3 builder. I really like your vision for future works to continue growing the ecosystem and I have two follow-up questions on that:
Hey Devin and the rest of the UF team, thanks for this detailed summary of your work and vision for the future.
Alice here, DAO member, Uniswap liquidity provider and Web3 builder. I really like your vision for future works to continue growing the ecosystem and I have two follow-up questions on that:
Is continued support for grant recipients something you are doing/plan to do? I think the work you are doing on onboarding new developers via hackathons and funding new projects is key for the ecosystem's growth. But, first-time "founders" often have a hard time navigating the challenges of going from PoC (hackathon project or MVP project) to a successful product. In the start-up space, accelerator and mentorship programs exist to address this issue and guide founders beyond the initial idea toward the creation of a sustainable project. I think having a light version of this for UF grant recipients and hookathon winners may help the community to create products that have an impact on the growth of the Uniswap ecosystem. To some extents, this is what Consensys did in Ethereum's early days to support products like MetaMask, Gnosis and Infura in their early days. Are you/do you plan to leverage your expertise and connections with industry leaders to continuously support grant recipients/hookathon winners?
Is collaboration with non-Web3 projects something you are considering? I see you are extensively collaborating with players in the Web3 ecosystem and that's great. But, since this is a 3/4-years-long plan, I'm wondering if there's a plan to both onboard "fresh ecosystem workforce" and to leverage other technologies to grow the Uniswap ecosystem. For example, I think a collaboration with something like Replit may be a strategic move as it could help developers write Web3-safe code (e.g. a sort of "autocorrect" with best practices for smart contract developers), while enabling the UF to access a large community of Web2 developers. Is this something you are considering for the longer term?
Thanks for your answers and thanks again for your work 💪
Also, big fan of your initiative to bring delegates together IRL!
The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.
We don’t see any reasons not to complete the voted upon funding. We also understand the need for an additional buffer to the requested amount to account for any capital or procedural losses. As a result, we’ll be voting in favor of the proposal.
Hi Naught, thank you for your thoughtful comments, it’s appreciated. I remember you left some thoughtful comments and questions and on our initial proposal last year as well.
Hi Naught, thank you for your thoughtful comments, it’s appreciated. I remember you left some thoughtful comments and questions and on our initial proposal last year as well.

Governance approval over $2M.
Regarding governance approval over $2M, I see your point better now. Still I remain unconvinced. Crypto is moving quickly, but not that quickly.
Thanks Devin for the detailed reply. Hope other delegates also find this discussion helpful!
Regarding governance approval over $2M, I see your point better now. Still I remain unconvinced. Crypto is moving quickly, but not that quickly.
To compare, academic grant timelines can be many months or even a year. Still, many talented teams work with these rules.
Thanks for the support and great questions @alicecorsini!
First of all — UF is doing a great job! I believe that many will agree that UF has been a net positive for the space.
However, this is a significant request for this type of funding. And we're in a bear market, the tokenholders already suffer, so the expenses should be carefully balanced with the expected impact.
Some further thoughts / questions.
First of all — UF is doing a great job! I believe that many will agree that UF has been a net positive for the space.
However, this is a significant request for this type of funding. And we're in a bear market, the tokenholders already suffer, so the expenses should be carefully balanced with the expected impact.
Some further thoughts / questions.
Conflict of interest: I'm a former grant recipient from the UF.
Hi @zilayo, happy to speak to these questions.
The $52.3M budget for Grants is meant to last until 2027-2028 (we discuss this in the Forecast/Grants section).
Additionally you can find more about our Grantees in the Update: One Year In section above, check our this summary thread we posted recently on completed Grantee projects, or see all of our past grantees here.
Following up here with some stats thanks to @zcf at Agora. During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power. As someone who speaks to many of these delegates on a regular basis, they've been real value add to the governance community. Increased distribution of voting power (to values-aligned, active contributors) will continue to be an important part of our roadmap and I'm looking forward to more events like the Delegate Race. (cc: @Naught )
The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.
We don’t see any reasons not to complete the voted upon funding. We also understand the need for an additional buffer to the requested amount to account for any capital or procedural losses. As a result, we’ll be voting in favor of the proposal.
Hi Naught, thank you for your thoughtful comments, it’s appreciated. I remember you left some thoughtful comments and questions and on our initial proposal last year as well.
Hi Naught, thank you for your thoughtful comments, it’s appreciated. I remember you left some thoughtful comments and questions and on our initial proposal last year as well.

Governance approval over $2M.
Regarding governance approval over $2M, I see your point better now. Still I remain unconvinced. Crypto is moving quickly, but not that quickly.
Thanks Devin for the detailed reply. Hope other delegates also find this discussion helpful!
Regarding governance approval over $2M, I see your point better now. Still I remain unconvinced. Crypto is moving quickly, but not that quickly.
To compare, academic grant timelines can be many months or even a year. Still, many talented teams work with these rules.
Thanks for the support and great questions @alicecorsini!
First of all — UF is doing a great job! I believe that many will agree that UF has been a net positive for the space.
However, this is a significant request for this type of funding. And we're in a bear market, the tokenholders already suffer, so the expenses should be carefully balanced with the expected impact.
Some further thoughts / questions.
First of all — UF is doing a great job! I believe that many will agree that UF has been a net positive for the space.
However, this is a significant request for this type of funding. And we're in a bear market, the tokenholders already suffer, so the expenses should be carefully balanced with the expected impact.
Some further thoughts / questions.
Conflict of interest: I'm a former grant recipient from the UF.
Hi @zilayo, happy to speak to these questions.
The $52.3M budget for Grants is meant to last until 2027-2028 (we discuss this in the Forecast/Grants section).
Additionally you can find more about our Grantees in the Update: One Year In section above, check our this summary thread we posted recently on completed Grantee projects, or see all of our past grantees here.
Following up here with some stats thanks to @zcf at Agora. During the Delegate Race, 115 distinct addresses delegated just over 8.34m UNI and 12 delegates each gained at least 100k UNI in voting power. As someone who speaks to many of these delegates on a regular basis, they've been real value add to the governance community. Increased distribution of voting power (to values-aligned, active contributors) will continue to be an important part of our roadmap and I'm looking forward to more events like the Delegate Race. (cc: @Naught )
Hi @zilayo, happy to speak to these questions.
The $52.3M budget for Grants is meant to last until 2027-2028 (we discuss this in the Forecast/Grants section).
Additionally you can find more about our Grantees in the Update: One Year In section above, check our this summary thread we posted recently on completed Grantee projects, or see all of our past grantees here.
Some more recent highlights (which aren’t included in the thread above or website):
Hey Atis, thanks for your thoughtful questions.
First to your comment on the request.
Hey Atis, thanks for your thoughtful questions.
First to your comment on the request.
Re: KPIs, thanks for bringing this up!
We set internal OKRs on an annual basis, and then set quarterly specific KRs. A few of our strategic OKRs are below
OKR1 - 300 new developers building projects on Uniswap [This has already been achieved, we are at 325 with 2 more hackathons to go]
OKR2 - Dedicate 100% of funding (grants, RFPs, fellows, etc.) to strategic programs and/or top quality grantees
OKR3: Onboard 3-5 delegates who are long-term- and values-aligned with Uniswap
Looking forward to 2024, we will set our OKRs according to the three goals set out in our proposal (covered in this section) - many of the items listed may materialize in KRs. While these are directional - and may change as we finalize 2024 planning - I’m happy to share what we are thinking.
Re: Projected Team Growth
Re: Governance approval over $2M.
Re: Accountability
Re: excess tokens
Hi @zilayo, happy to speak to these questions.
The $52.3M budget for Grants is meant to last until 2027-2028 (we discuss this in the Forecast/Grants section).
Additionally you can find more about our Grantees in the Update: One Year In section above, check our this summary thread we posted recently on completed Grantee projects, or see all of our past grantees here.
Some more recent highlights (which aren’t included in the thread above or website):
Hey Atis, thanks for your thoughtful questions.
First to your comment on the request.
Hey Atis, thanks for your thoughtful questions.
First to your comment on the request.
Re: KPIs, thanks for bringing this up!
We set internal OKRs on an annual basis, and then set quarterly specific KRs. A few of our strategic OKRs are below
OKR1 - 300 new developers building projects on Uniswap [This has already been achieved, we are at 325 with 2 more hackathons to go]
OKR2 - Dedicate 100% of funding (grants, RFPs, fellows, etc.) to strategic programs and/or top quality grantees
OKR3: Onboard 3-5 delegates who are long-term- and values-aligned with Uniswap
Looking forward to 2024, we will set our OKRs according to the three goals set out in our proposal (covered in this section) - many of the items listed may materialize in KRs. While these are directional - and may change as we finalize 2024 planning - I’m happy to share what we are thinking.
Re: Projected Team Growth
Re: Governance approval over $2M.
Re: Accountability
Re: excess tokens