Harvard University and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web Plan to Preserve Digital Information

July 31, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Universities including Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Oxford to form EduDAO to promote Web 3.0 innovations, financed by BitDAO treasury

December 16, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Berkley

The funds from EduDAO will be used for research, education and entrepreneurship in Web 3.0 technologies among the world's top universities.

On Thursday, BitDAO, one of the world's largest decentralized autonomous organizations with over $2.5 billion assets under management and its partner Mirana Ventures, announced the creation of EduDAO with eight of the world's top universities including the University of California Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Oxford University.

EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury and will allocate $11 million each year to funding project grants, research and standalone product development with $33 million in initial capital. The funds will go to academic research for next-generation blockchain and Web 3.0 technologies.

"Tomorrow’s most promising products and designs are being devised at the university level right now; this partnership facilitates that growth at a scalable level by giving students and faculties access to sorely needed investment capital," said John Allen of Mirana Ventures.

Roman Ugarte and Virat Talwar, co-presidents of the Harvard Blockchain Club, said: "Placing the power of targeted funding and information distribution in the hands of a decentralized collective of students, faculty members, and alumni is a revolutionary step forward for institutions such as Harvard."

Jocelyn Weber Phipps, deputy director for UC Berkeley’s Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI), added:

UC Berkeley is honored to partner with EducationDAO and further build on our new Berkeley RDI Center’s efforts to act as a hub and platform for collaborations globally with other organizations & researchers, as exemplified in leading the first DeFi MOOC with thousands of students enrolled from 30+ countries and our non-dilutive Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator open to teams around the world.

Blockchain Groups From Major Universities Are Powerful Voters in Defi Governance Protocols

July 14, 2021 Bitcoin.com

ConsenSys throws its weight behind Uniswap DeFi lobbying proposal

June 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The controversial proposal is gaining the support of the big players.

Ethereum solutions provider ConsenSys has pledged support for a Uniswap governance proposal to set aside tokens for a new decentralized finance (DeFi) fund for political lobbying.

The proposal was made on May 27 by the Harvard Law School Blockchain and FinTech Initiative for the creation of a fund that would finance existing and new political groups engaged in crypto policy-making and lobbying to defend DeFi against regulation.

The Harvard Law BFI proposal cited concerns that governments around the world may try to regulate DeFi without proper education and suggested a fund of 1-1.5 million UNI. It ledged more than 10 million tokens in support of the idea. The proposal is headed towards a full vote.

Some @Consensys thoughts (support) on the recent @HarvardLawBFI Uniswap policy proposal.https://t.co/GuVUlUjXiL

cc @RebeccaRettig1 @boironattorney @jchervinsky @ammori
— Matt Corva (@MattCorva) June 2, 2021

General legal counsel at ConsenSys, Matt Corva, stated that educating lawmakers is of critical importance at this juncture, “particularly as we creep towards true aspirational 'main street' use of our technologies”:

“In sum, this is a terrific effort and Uniswap taking the first step could break the floodgates of other large treasuries supporting this (or similar) initiatives.”

Calling it “one of the best initiatives to date”, Corva stated that the firm had been engaged in some form of policy and advocacy, either directly or indirectly, since early 2016. He added that the two best uses for community funds in his view were things that drive real-life use of the technology, and simultaneous advocacy.

“Therefore, we will be supporting this and have already communicated to our portfolio companies our wish that they consider doing the same.”

According to the firm's investment arm Mesh, portfolio companies include crypto lending platform BlockFi, security firm Quantstamp, scaling solutions provider Starkware, and DeFi protocol Compound Finance, which may be able to tip the voting balance.

The DeFi political defense fund will target the Biden administration’s 2020 budget proposal, which includes a potential expansion of crypto asset reporting requirements, among others.

Consensys should become a Uniswap delegate on https://t.co/vc9625wzWi :)
— Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams) June 2, 2021

The Uniswap governance proposal has been controversial since many disagree that a single organization and a handful of lawyers should decide how to deploy lobbying funds for the rest of the community.

Pseudonymous crypto-influencer DCinvestor remained skeptical, stating that the amount requested was “simply too great”, and it is not consistent with responsible treasury management.

Uniswap governance process involves three stages: a “temperature check” vote requiring 25,000 UNI to pass, a “consensus check” vote needing 50,000 to pass, and the final vote needing a quorum of 40 million UNI to pass.

The snapshot reported that there were 34 million votes for and 17.8 million against in the “consensus check” stage meaning that it will now move to a full vote.

According to Etherscan, there are a number of UNI whale addresses holding more than 10 million tokens and ConsenSys could well be one of them. Its support of the proposal will no doubt be influential on the outcome.

Harvard Law BFI throws 10.5M votes behind own proposal to fund DeFi lobby with UNI

May 28, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

It is not the first time Uniswap governance has been dominated by a whale.

The effect of whales on Uniswap governance is a topic of hot debate once again after Harvard's blockchain group threw a massive amount of voting power behind its own proposal.

The proposal, made on May 27 by the Harvard Law School Blockchain and FinTech Initiative, is for the creation of a fund that would finance existing and new political groups engaged in crypto policy making and lobbying to defend decentralized finance against regulation.

The proposed fund would have a chest of 1-1.5 million UNI, worth approximately $28 million to $42 million at current prices. At the time of writing Harvard Law BFI has pledged 10.46 million UNI tokens, or 99% of the votes, in favor of the proposal. There are just 766,460 votes against it so far.

Industry observer and critic of centralized governance, Chris Blec from DeFi Watch, was one of the first to comment on the heavily weighted voting mechanism.

⚠️ @HarvardLawBFI just cast a 10.45m UNI vote in favor of its own proposal to pay a bunch of lawyers 1.5m UNI out of the treasury.

Their vote accounts for 99.9% of the "yes" votes so far.

Here we go again, y'all. https://t.co/9M9Da6XyVz pic.twitter.com/r3axyG35QW
— Chris Blec (@ChrisBlec) May 27, 2021

The “here we go again” quip refers to Uniswap’s first governance vote in October 2020, proposed by trading platform Dharma to reduce the proposal submission threshold. The proposal would have given the majority of the voting power to the top two token holders (Dharma and blockchain simulation platform Gauntlet). The two of them dominated the ballot with their own heavy bags bringing Uniswap’s governance into question, however, the vote was defeated by a tiny margin.

The lobbying fund, if passed, would have four primary goals according to Harvard, consisting of educating policymakers to preempt regulatory, legal, political, and tax threats to DeFi, secondly achieving regulatory clarity for DeFi related activities. The third goal would be to advance laws that support DeFi and decentralized governance, and finally encourage other DeFi protocols’ governance communities to contribute to the effort.

Harvard Law BFI responded stating that it was only natural for them to vote for their own proposal, adding:

“Additionally, we have this voting power from UNI holders who delegated their votes to us (which they are free to retract at any time).”

It stated that there were enough votes to create a snapshot proposal, but it cannot unilaterally get it through a consensus check without a majority of votes.

At the moment the proposal is in “temperature check” mode which means it needs a minimum of 25,000 UNI in support, which it already has. To pass a full proposal after the “consensus check” stage, it needs a quorum of 40 million UNI in favor.

Harvard

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