Uniswap funds DAO incentive improvement project

April 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The project will provide at least three proposals for Uniswap incentive mechanisms by June.

Financial modeling platform Gauntlet has been awarded a grant from Uniswap Foundation to improve DAO incentive mechanisms, according to an announcement from Gauntlet.

Very excited to announce our engagement with @gauntletnetwork and their new Applied Research Group!

Gauntlet will be focused on designing and specifying incentive programs to benefit the Uniswap Protocol. https://t.co/RjzV02hFhf
— Uniswap Foundation (@UniswapFND) April 11, 2023

Gauntlet describes itself as a “crypto-native financial risk management solutions provider.” It uses economic models to optimize fees and rewards for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to the announcement. The company is creating a new division, Gauntlet Applied Research, which will specifically focus on problems related to the growing decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) ecosystem.

In its announcement, Gauntlet said that it will provide three pieces of research to UniswapDAO. The first will be a quantitative framework that the DAO can use to evaluate the success or failure of the Uniswap protocol. The second will be an analysis of trader and liquidity provider behavior, and the third will be at least three proposals for incentive mechanisms to allow the DAO to achieve its goals.

Gauntlet said that it expects all three of these deliverables to be completed by June 2023.

Devin Walsh, executive director of Uniswap Foundation, expressed hope that Gauntlet’s research will help to improve not only the Uniswap protocol, but also the crypto ecosystem as a whole, stating:

One of our goals at the Uniswap Foundation is to build long-term relationships with the most talented and values-aligned teams in the space, and work with them on the most complex and interesting questions facing the Uniswap Protocol.

DAOs have become a basic feature of the crypto economy over the past few years, with DAO analytics provider DeepDAO currently listing over 2,300 existing DAOs. Most DAOs are governed by token holders, who are allowed to vote directly on the blockchain to support or reject proposals for changes to a protocol.

However, token-based DAO governance has also been criticized by some industry experts, including Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin, who stated that this system could lead to “vote-buying” and “outright attacks.”

Over the past few months, some DAOs have attempted to provide better incentive mechanisms in the hopes of preventing vote-buying attacks. For example, MakerDAO passed a constitution on March 27 to formalize governance processes and provide checks and balances to prevent concentration of power.

Uniswap’s BNB deployment should use multiple bridges, claims LIFI CEO

February 8, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Governance System

The LIFI executive proposed that a team of four researchers be appointed to study the idea of a multi-bridge approach.

As Uniswap DAO’s vote to deploy to BNB chain continues, LIFI CEO Phillip Zentner argued in a February 6 forum post that the current proposal is flawed. According to him, the plan to use Wormhole as the sole governance bridge for Uniswap should be abandoned. Instead, he claimed that Uniswap researchers should work on a standardized system for using multiple bridges to handle governance decisions.

The ongoing discussion on @Uniswap's forum is critical for the multi-chain ecosystem in 2023.

TL;DR: Uniswap's model for x-chain governance will likely become industry standard.

As an unbiased member of the community, @lifiprotocol is rooting for a multi-bridge implementation
— Philipp Zentner | LI.FI (@PhilippZentner) February 6, 2023

In the post, Zentner stated that LIFI strongly recommends “that Uniswap not select one bridge provider for its BNB Chain Deployment Proposal” because “no single AMB [arbitrary messaging bridge] is tested enough to be considered a robust and secure solution that a project of Uniswap’s size can solely rely on at this point.”

As evidence of this, Zentner reminded readers of the slew of bridge hacks the crypto community has suffered over the past two years, stating:

“Lest it be forgotten, two major AMBs were exploited in the past twelve months (Nomad and Wormhole), while LayerZero has also come under fire recently for its security model (Prestwich 2, L2Beat). We do not say this as condemnation, rather, we point this out to highlight just how difficult it is to build secure AMBs and the subsequent risks a dApp is exposed to by choosing a single bridging solution.”

For this reason, LIFI wants to see “a multi-bridge, agnostic approach” to Uniswap governance. Zentner proposed that this could be accomplished by appointing a team of four engineers to study the subject and submit a proposal.

The LIFI CEO seemed to imply that the current proposal should be voted down and the date of BNB Chain deployment postponed until at least March 27. According to an image posted by Zentner, the Uniswap team had previously set a deadline of March 27 for a “final report published with community recommendations.” Zenter said that he believes this deadline can still be met, even if the current proposal is voted down.

Venture capital firm a16z recently attempted to use its 15 million UNI tokens to vote the BNB proposal down, due to the firm’s concerns about Wormhole bridge security. However, Metamask developer ConsenSys has used its 7 million UNI votes to support the proposal. The vote is scheduled to end on Feb. 10.

Wormhole wins second ‘temp check’ to become bridge for Uniswap governance

January 31, 2023 Coin Telegraph

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Wormhole got over 60% of the vote in the Uniswap DAO referendum, with LayerZero coming in second.

The Uniswap DAO has approved a second non-binding proposal, called a “temperature check,” to make Wormhole the official bridge for cross-chain governance of the protocol between BNB Chain and Ethereum, according to the official proposal page.

BREAKING: Wormhole has won the vote to be Uniswap's designated bridge to the Binance Chain! This is a major step forward in the development of the DeFi ecosystem. #DeFi #BNBChain #Uniswap #Wormhole
— BitArchive (@ChainArchives) January 31, 2023

The proposal will now become part of a final plan to deploy Uniswap V3 to the BNB Chain, which will go up for a binding governance vote at some point in the future.

Wormhole was up against three rival bridge solutions in the DAO’s referendum: LayerZero, deBridge and Celer. It got a clear majority with 62.31% of the vote. LayerZero was second with 37.58%, and DeBridge and Celer each got less than 0.1%.

This is the second time the Uniswap DAO has attempted to reach consensus on the choice of bridging solutions. On Jan. 21, the DAO voted in a temp check to deploy Uniswap V3 on the BNB Chain and to utilize Celer bridge to handle cross-chain governance votes. However, even before this vote had finished, some community members had started to express security and centralization concerns regarding using Celer bridge.

On Jan. 27, DAO members began voting on this second temperature check to decide specifically on the choice of bridge, with the understanding that the decision to deploy to BNB chain had been settled in the previous vote.

The Solana-Ethereum version of Wormhole was hacked in February 2022, allowing the attacker to gain $321 million worth of crypto in one of the largest decentralized finance exploits ever. However, the Wormhole team replaced the Ether (ETH) in the bridge to reimburse users, and the BNB-Ethereum version of the bridge doesn’t seem to have been affected by the exploit.

LayerZero was recently the subject of controversy, as a rival developer accused the bridging protocol of having security vulnerabilities. The LayerZero team has rejected the accusation, claiming it is misleading.

Here’s why Algorand (ALGO) price just rallied to a new multi-year high

September 10, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Adoption

Institutional investment, new governance features and a groundbreaking project with the government of El Salvador are just a few of the factors behind ALGO’s rally to a new all-time high.

Real-world adoption is what really matters when it comes to being a successful blockchain project and one project that benefited from a recent uptick in adoption is Algorand (ALGO), a pure proof-of-stake protocol aiming to become the go-to base layer for the global financial industry.

*ALGO/USDT 1-day chart. Source:* *TradingView*

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since bottoming out at $0.67 on July 20, the price of ALGO has rocketed 268% higher to a daily high at $2.47 on Sept. 9 as its 24-hour trading volume surged to a record-high $4.83 billion.

El Salvador builds on Algorand

The sudden surge in price and trading volume for Algorand came following El Salvador's announcement that is now recognized as legal tender and that the country has also selected Algorand's blockchain to help develop its blockchain infrastructure.

The Algorand network has slowly gained increased attention from larger institutions and governments as a result of its work on central bank digital currencies (CBDC) and the project has already been chosen to host popular stablecoins like USD Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT).

Its selection by El Salvador is perhaps the most significant vote of confidence the project has received to date and it has the potential to lead to further large-scale adoption as other governments and institutions watch to see how the project progresses.

NFTs, DeFi and governance could attract new users

A second factor helping drive the price of ALGO are recent moves made by the Algorand Foundation to get the community more involved with the project and active on the network.

The project is in the process of launching governance features for token holders, which are set to go live on Oct. 1 and will give users more of a say in the future development of the platform.

The project developers are also working on new decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token applications that may attract new users who want to get in on the NFT craze action but are prevented by the high fees on the Ethereum (ETH)network.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for ALGO on Sept. 4, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

*VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. ALGO price. Source:* *Cointelegraph Markets Pro*

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for ALGO was elevated early in the month of September and reached a high of 70 on Sept. 4, roughly 78 hours before the price began to increased 114% over the next two days.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

Coin Governance System

El Salvador builds on Algorand

NFTs, DeFi and governance could attract new users

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