July 14, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • Uniswap v3 started an Alpha period on Optimism, bringing the AMM one step closer to adopting Layer 2 tech.

  • Capital Group purchased a 12% stake in MicroStrategy — giving the $2.2T asset manager indirect exposure to BTC.

  • British police seized $250M in cryptocurrency in a money-laundering crackdown.

  • Shipyard Software closed a $21M funding round with plans to build a retail-oriented DEX.

  • S&P Dow Jones created five new crypto indices.

  • Connext, an Ethereum interoperability network, raised $12M with participation from 82 investors.

  • Grayscale selected BNY Mellon as its asset provider for GBTC.

  • Bitcoin mining is going nuclear in Ohio by December 2021.

What Do You Meme?


What’s Poppin’?

Yesterday, the DeFi Education Fund announced the sale of half of the one million UNI tokens that it received from Uniswap’s treasury roughly two weeks ago.

The sale somewhat contradicts the initial proposal, which outlined a plan for the tokens to be allocated over a 4-5 year period — to not dilute UNI’s price.

The DeFi Education Fund proposal was passed by Uniswap DAO members on June 29th, totaling nearly 80 million votes in approval versus roughly 15 million against. The proposal’s approval awarded one million UNI tokens to fund and create to the DeFi Education Fund, a 501(c)(4) non-profit intended to provide grants to further support existing and new political groups engaged in crypto policy and/or lobbying.

Focused on educating policymakers, funding research, providing legal firepower, articulating the promise of DeFi, and creating best practices, The DeFi Education Fund is headed by a group of seven committee members in charge of handing out grants from the fund, which is currently valued at ~$20M.

Stemming from the Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative, the proposal had to go through three phases of approval, Temperature Check, Consensus Check, and Governance Check before being put into action. After initially naming itself a “defense” fund, it rebranded to education, easily earning enough votes to get approved.

Not everyone, however, is excited about the fund, especially after the $10M sale converting UNI to USDC.

Indeed, many are frustrated the bill was even passed in the first place.

Much of the ire is focused on student organizations, which accounted for 1/3rd of the votes on Uniswap’s last proposal, according to Messari’s Jack Purdy.

HsakaTrades, a crypto trader, went so far as to call Uniswap’s decentralization into question, noting that many of the student orgs are a16z delegates:

The lack of decentralization amongst voters is apparent to anyone looking at the results of the Consensus Check, which shows that 75% of votes in favor came from just a few large addresses, including HarvardLawBFI (10.46 million UNI), the Ethereum Foundation’s support specialist Kenneth Ng (10.25 million UNI), former partner at Andreessen Horowitz Jesse Walden (8 million UNI), and UCLA Blockchain (5 million UNI).

The Temperature Check was even more drastic, with over 99% of approval votes came from just six wallets.

In total, the $20M DeFi Education Fund grant makes up less than half of a percent of Uniswap’s $3B treasury. The stakes are low. The DeFi Education Fund will not make or break Uniswap/DeFi. Yet it is a good reminder that most DeFi protocols are still working towards the actual decentralization part of their existence.


Recommended Reads

  • Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani on DAO investing:

 

  • CoinDesk with a Lightning Network deep-dive:

  • Caitlin Long on crypto regulatory issues:


On The Pod…

Can a DAO Go to Court? According to Two DAO Legal Experts… Probably

Aaron Wright, co-founder of OpenLaw and Professor at Cardozo Law, and Ross Campbell, SushiSwap core developer and LexDAO contributor, discuss the latest breakthroughs and legal implications in the burgeoning world of DAOs. Show highlights:

  • how Aaron and Ross fell down the crypto rabbit hole
  • whether a DAO, like Curve, could sue to protect its IP
  • when a governance token might be considered a security
  • who owns the copyright to a DAO
  • how SushiSwap handles its open-source licenses
  • why Ross views Uniswap’s business license as a good thing
  • what a DAO is and how the idea stems from Bitcoin
  • how Wyoming’s DAO law works
  • what makes a Wyoming DAO different from a DAO registered as a Delaware LLC
  • how an algorithmically managed DAO might work in the future
  • why Aaron thinks a DAO should not be allowed to be manager-managed
  • why wrapping a DAO into an LLC could be advantageous
  • the difference between private and public ordering

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Nov. 2nd. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians