[Read the full proposal here: https://gov.uniswap.org/t/temperature-check-create-the-uniswap-foundation/17358]
Uniswap Foundation: Preamble
Uniswap has already changed the world.
In only 3 years, the world’s first automated market maker has pioneered DeFi primitives, supported more than $1T 7 in cumulative volume, and served millions of users 4 worldwide. Its daily volume today is on par with Coinbase 10.
Ownership of the protocol was transferred to the community 12 in 2020 and since then the Uniswap Grants Program (UGP) has demonstrated the potential for community-funded initiatives to make a positive impact. Over 1.5 years, UGP has funded 120+ grantees 22 improving governance, and developing new interfaces and developer tooling.
However, there is still work to do to help Uniswap reach its full potential. The governance process has too much friction, the ecosystem is too difficult to navigate, and UGP in its current form is not able to fund the most ambitious and impactful projects.
We want to change that.
Today, we are excited to propose the creation of the Uniswap Foundation, which has the mission to support the decentralized growth and sustainability of the Uniswap Protocol and its supporting ecosystem and community.
In other words, the goal of the Uniswap Foundation is to support you.
Uniswap’s community is expansive, encompassing the universe of individuals and organizations which build on and benefit from decentralized protocols. Your contributions have already made Uniswap a success, but we want to help you accomplish much more.
The Uniswap Foundation (UF) will provide grants to builders, researchers, organizers, academics, analysts, and more to grow the Protocol and plan for its future.
It will make it easier to govern the protocol and community treasury, and to navigate the broader ecosystem.
It will help you make an impact – to reduce friction, and amplify your efforts.
We believe that Uniswap will be the value exchange layer of the Internet.
It brought the automated market maker to the masses.
It has led the way in the evolution and growth of DeFi and web3.
It is censorship resistant, permissionless, decentralized, and secure – constituting a set of properties which we believe should define our world’s financial infrastructure.
But there is still a long way to go for Uniswap to reach its full potential.
We’re excited to work with all of you to make that happen.
If you’re excited too, please read our proposal, comment, reach out to chat (our DMs - @devinawalsh and @nkennethk are open!), and spread the word.
Uniswap Foundation Proposal
This proposal is being put forth by the Uniswap Foundation, a Delaware corporation formed by Uniswap community members Devin Walsh and Ken Ng to facilitate the steps outlined in this proposal.
TL;DR
Today, we are thrilled to propose the creation of the Uniswap Foundation (UF).
Scope: The UF, the first Foundation of a major protocol to go through the community governance process, will support the Protocol’s decentralized growth, reinvigorate governance, and serve as a Protocol advocate.
Team: Devin Walsh will serve as the Executive Director, Ken Ng will serve as Head of Operations, and they will build out a team of 12.
Budget: To fund these efforts, we are requesting:
A $14M Operating budget to cover a full team for 3 years
A $60M expanded Uniswap Grants Program (UGP) budget to cover 3+ years
We are requesting $74M total, which will be broken into two disbursements, with a first disbursement of $20M.
Governance Participation: We are also requesting 2.5M UNI to participate in governance, primarily through delegation. Through usage of a new smart contract primitive The Franchiser 40, this UNI will be revocable by the DAO at any time, and cannot be used for any purpose outside of governance.
Uniswap Foundation
Mission
In pursuit of a more open and fair financial system, the Uniswap Foundation supports the decentralized growth and sustainability of the Uniswap Protocol and its supporting ecosystem.
Key Activities and OKRs
We have listed our starting OKRs below. It’s possible these OKRs will have to change in the future. If they do change in a meaningful way, we will communicate that to the community.
Growth: Promoting Decentralization & Growth of the Protocol and Ecosystem
![OKR 1.png]()
Governance: Reinvigorating the Uniswap Community Governance Process
![OKR 2.png]()
Advocacy: Advocating for the Protocol and amplifying its positive social impact
![OKR 3.png]()
Optimism Phase 0 token distribution link here 6
Year 1 Roadmap
Our roadmap for the first year of operations includes but is not limited to the following activities:
![Year 1.png]()
Optimism Collective community Constitution link here
Team
Devin Walsh 108, Executive Director (ED)
As ED, Devin will be responsible for setting UF’s strategic vision alongside the Board and driving execution to achieve that vision.
Devin has been in crypto since 2016. She has conducted independent research for MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, worked on decentralized identity at uPort (ConsenSys), and led protocol and venture investments at CoinFund. She has consulted with Edge & Node and cLabs, and led MIRA, a seed stage startup at the intersection of fine art and NFTs. She recently resigned as Chief of Staff at Uniswap Labs in order to propose the creation of the UF.
Ken Ng 69, Head of Operations
As Head of Operations, Ken will build and scale processes to maximize the UF’s impact.
Ken has served the Uniswap ecosystem as Lead of the Uniswap Grants Program 1 for the past 1.5 years. He has helped run the Ethereum Foundation Ecosystem Support Program, which gave Hayden his initial grant 7 to build Uniswap. He served as COO of Slingshot Finance and cofounder of his nonprofit eduDAO, which helps raise funds for students and teachers in the Bronx.
The needs, and thus the makeup, of our team may change over time. However, today we aim to hire for following roles, with a focus on filling the Grants and Governance roles first:
![Team.png]()
Applications are open today! Check out job descriptions here.
As noted by Other Internet 4, there is also a need for new structures to “facilitate coordination across the complex web of stakeholders” within the Uniswap ecosystem. To provide this much needed coordination, the UF will be committed to working with a variety of independent parties (freelancers, development teams, research fellows, analysts, and more) to achieve many of its objectives.
Advisors
The Foundation’s initial advisory team will be made up of the following individuals:
Jesse Walden, Founder and GP, Variant
Julia Rosenberg, Co-Founder, Orca Protocol
Alexis Gauba, Co-Founder, Opyn; Co-Founder, she256
Hart Lambur, Co-Founder of UMA
In addition to advising UF on strategy and roadmap, this group will, alongside the Executive Director (ED) and Head of Operations,
Provide input on UF’s initial hiring decisions. This may include interviewing potential candidates and sharing feedback with the Committee as it determines its first hires, including its third Board member and at least next three team members.
Become temporary signers of the UF multi-sig, which will hold UF funds if and when the proposal is passed, for the sole purpose of executing approved proposals as instructed. This responsibility will be transitioned to UF team members once they are hired.
Board
Devin Walsh and Ken Ng will serve as the first two Board members of the UF. Alongside the UF’s Advisors, they will interview and target to hire a third Board member in the first 3 months of operations.
Budget
We are requesting $74M in UNI. This funding would be broken down into the following buckets:
$60M for Uniswap Grants Program
Grants spending will be broken down into the below categories. We will revisit and readjust these categories as needed to ensure we continue to deploy resources where they are most impactful.
We are proud of the work done by UGP thus far (memorialized in this retrospective 22), and are incredibly excited to expand the scope of its work.
![Grants.png]()
We are already in the process of assessing several high impact grant proposals which UGP would be excited to fund, if and when this proposal is passed. Two examples are:
A version of Uniswap v3 written in Cairo, to be deployed on Starknet
A prototype of an MEV estimation tool leveraging machine learning techniques built by respected academics in the space
We are also excited to continue funding ongoing work by existing grantees funded by UGP v0.1, including governance experiments and analyses from Other Internet, customer support from Serv.eth, and ETHGlobal hackathons.
To ensure community alignment with larger grants disbursements, the UF will put forth an off-chain Snapshot to the community for proposed grants larger than $2M.
We believe that this Grants budget will last approximately 3 years but this is subject to change depending upon the number and quality of applicants. We plan to approach the Treasury for additional Grants funds when there are ~6 months of funds remaining.
$14M operating budget to build out a full team of 12 over the next two years.
In order to provide stability to our employees and to sustain the Foundation, we may make a request to the community for additional funding for further out than 3 years when we return to the Treasury at 6-12 months of operations (read more below).
Budget estimate looking forward three years is below.
![Budget.png]()
*Inclusive of UNI vesting. In order to incentivize a highly qualified team, the UF will offer competitive compensation packages including both fiat and long-term vesting UNI. To provide full transparency, we will disclose UF financials later this year.
**The UF will allocate an additional $2M in funds to cover legal fees in the case of unexpected future litigation.
Fund Disbursements
An approval of this proposal is an approval for the full $74M budget requested.
We are requesting the funds in two disbursements:
$20M now to cover operating expenses for the next 2 years and grants for 1 year. Assuming a UNI price of $7.04*, this initial request totals to 2,840,909 UNI.
$54M, to be disbursed by the Uniswap Treasury in 6-12 months once the UF has completed the establishment of its legal entity. The UF will publish a post on the forum notifying the community a week prior to putting forth a formal governance proposal for the remaining funds. In other words, because this proposal approves the full amount of funding, we will not go through an additional the Temperature Check and Consensus Check steps to receive this second disbursement.
*To calculate our final UNI request we will use the 30 day TWAP on the day we put forth our Governance Proposal. $7.04 is approximately the 30 day TWAP as of 8/3/2022.
Governance Participation
The UF is also requesting 2.5M UNI to participate in governance.
These tokens will be delegated to the UF by the Uniswap DAO through a new smart contract design, The Franchiser, which ensures the tokens are only used for delegation, and allows the DAO to claw back the tokens at any time. The UF plans to use these tokens primarily for delegation to community members without the requisite 2.5M UNI to submit a governance proposal, however the UF may also self-delegate the UNI to vote, and to put up its own proposals.
The Franchiser was developed by Noah Zinsmeister and was audited by Trail of Bits.
Next Steps
We are excited to discuss this proposal with the broader community as it passes through the Request for Comment phase. Should sentiment be positive, a Temperature Check Snapshot poll will be set up on Mon., August 8. If the Temperature Check poll passes, additional feedback will be incorporated before moving forward to the Consensus Check.
Additionally, to discuss the proposal and answer your questions, we plan to attend the Uniswap Community call at 4 PM EST on Wed., August 10, and to host a Twitter Spaces on @uniswapgrants at 11 AM EST on Mon., August 15.
[Read the full Proposal and Addendum here: https://gov.uniswap.org/t/temperature-check-create-the-uniswap-foundation/17358]
