Uniswap’s First Governance Vote Ends in Ironic Failure

Governance voting for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Uniswap has got off to an inglorious start.

• Despite 98% of the votes cast being in favor of a proposed change, the total number needed for a successful vote fell short of the 40 million required by about 400,000.
• The vote had been intended, somewhat ironically, to decide whether or not to reduce the token threshold required to make and pass proposals on the protocol.
• The final tally in the vote ending earlier on Tuesday stood at 39,596,759 for, and 696,857 against.
• The Ethereum-based protocol utilizes an automated market-making system leveraging liquidity pools so users can exchange or "swap" between ether (ETH) and any ERC-20 standard token.
• Last month, Uniswap became the first DeFi protocol to surpass the $2 billion milestone in terms of total value locked.
• Currently, only individuals holding 1% of the network's native token, UNI, may initiate proposals.
• A successful vote would have seen this requirement drop by around a third, while only 30 million votes would be needed to see a proposal passed.
• "Disappointing outcome" said Nadav Hollander, CEO and co-founder of crypto lender Dharma, in a tweet, as the vote itself had demonstrated the need for the proposal.
• Dharma had proposed the changes being voted on.
• However, Hollander also said the vote "galvanized users to delegate in much higher numbers," which was a "healthy outcome for Uniswap."

See also: Uniswap Users Have Claimed $560M Worth of UNI Tokens in a Week