With less than 2% of the voting power, a16z attempted to influence the on-chain vote on Uniswap, which sparked heated discussions in the crypto community, but it seems that the actual situation was not that bad.

"Cryptocurrency is not only an experiment in monetary theory, but also a radical experiment in decentralized governance." In 2016, after The DAO was attacked and hackers stole 3.6 million ETH overnight, causing Ethereum to hard fork, early Bitcoin developer Ariel Deschapell wrote this sentence in his blog.

Today, seven years later, the wave of Web3 has swept the entire Internet, and DAO has emerged from the aftermath of The DAO incident, proving that it is a better form of organization than traditional companies and enterprises.

The “proposal war” regarding Uniswap has set the crypto community ablaze recently, and this time, it’s just another day of crypto governance experimentation.

This time, a new proposal on Uniswap to deploy a trading protocol on the BNB chain has occupied the center of the DAO and the center of the crypto community. Many people have expressed concerns about the emergence of influential "coin whales" in the Uniswap governance process.

This whale is none other than the well-known venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), which has used its 15 million UNI tokens to vote against the current proposal. UNI is the native token of Uniswap and also serves as a governance token, allowing token holders to vote on key proposals.

The key debate that a16z sparked with his “all-token vote against Uniswap” seems to have nothing to do with whether Uniswap should be deployed on the BNB chain, but rather with the cross-chain bridge used behind the scenes.

The proposal suggests using Wormhole as a cross-chain bridge between Ethereum and BNB chains, but a16z has expressed its preference for using LayerZero, a cross-chain protocol supported by its own behind-the-scenes investment. a16z does not believe that Wormhole is the most secure or decentralized cross-chain bridge currently, and if Wormhole is chosen as the provider, Uniswap DAO will not be able to independently control the cross-chain bridge.

Eddie Lazzarin, a partner at a16z, has previously hinted that the company will fully support LayerZero in its portfolio as a cross-chain bridge for Uniswap:

“For complete clarity, we at a16z would commit 15 million tokens to LayerZero if it were technically possible.”

Wormhole is currently backed by another venture capital firm called Jump Crypto, but it has yet to vote on the proposal.

This perhaps highlights a key problem facing DAOs right now. The recent move by a16z highlights that while the spirit of blockchain is to decentralize and move away from centralized governance, DAOs are still controlled by the richest people. The more tokens you own, the more voting power you have. This makes the utility of DAO governance tokens increasingly meaningless.

This isn’t the first time a16z has been accused of being a centralized force in DeFi — despite its attempts to disperse its influence in DeFi protocol governance by delegating voting power to various custodian companies.

The Twitter crypto community appears to be split over the incident

Still, a16z’s vote sparked debate in the crypto Twitter community.

Binance CEO CZ asked his 8.1 million followers: “Is Uniswap controlled by a16z?”

DeFi researcher Chris Blec said, "Anti-competitive cartel behavior in DeFi is real" in response to a16z's massive vote. In another tweet, he quipped: "a16z owns the Uniswap protocol and will decide what future versions of Uniswap look like."

Others, however, took a very different stance, with Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov saying he “doesn’t see any problem” and that “this is how the free market works.”

DegenSpartan, the most mysterious DeFi investor, said that large voting by venture capital firms "is not a bug, it's a feature," adding, "If you want more voting power, buy more tokens."

Uniswap vote follow-up

Voting on the proposal is far from over and will close on February 10, but today saw a pretty big change in the “governance battle.”

While 15 million UNI Tokens is a large amount of money, it represents approximately 2% of UNI’s current market circulation and 1.5% of the total supply.

Therefore, the extent of a16z’s control over Uniswap may be exaggerated, as its 15 million “no” votes only initially accounted for a majority of all votes.

In the past 24 hours, votes from other "coin whales" - such as 5.76 million votes from Robert Lesher of Compound Labs, 4.92 million votes from GFX Labs, and 3.5 million votes from the Michigan Blockchain Organization - have almost offset a16z's vote, and the proposal currently has a vote of about 62% in favor and about 38% against.

So, does a16z really control Uniswap? Yes, and not entirely.