Uniswap's Governance Push for Inclusive Voting, Empowering Underrepresented Delegate

Proposal aims to redistribute voting power within Uniswap's governance, fostering fairness and inclusivity.

Uniswap’s governance is considering a new proposal aimed at empowering underrepresented DAO delegates by increasing their voting power. The proposal, currently undergoing a ‘temperature check’, plans to delegate 10 million UNI from the DAO’s treasury to these delegates.

The top four candidates could receive up to 2.5 million UNI each, with the remaining tokens being equally distributed among other candidates. These tokens, however, would not be tradeable and would only serve to increase the delegates’ influence in governance proposals.

Uniswap’s DAO allows token holders to either vote themselves or delegate their voting power to another entity. Delegates with at least 2.5 million votes are considered “underrepresented”. The proposal also notes that many top delegates with significant voting power have less than 50% vote participation rate, with some as low as 10% or 0%.

Critics have previously accused Uniswap’s governance of being dominated by a few UNI whales such as a16z, Dharma, and Gauntlet, leaving smaller delegates with little chance to influence decisions. This proposal could be a step towards decentralizing the power within the system.

Interestingly, Uniswap prices have seen a significant increase over the past 24 hours, though it’s unclear if this is directly related to the proposal. UNI climbed from $5.25 to a 14-week high of $6.26, outperforming the rest of the crypto markets. Despite a 42% increase over the past month, UNI remains down 86% from its May 2021 all-time high of $44.92.