{"id":29219,"date":"2020-09-25T19:54:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=29219"},"modified":"2025-08-27T15:45:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T12:45:22","slug":"glassnode-analysts-doubt-uniswaps-decentralisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/glassnode-analysts-doubt-uniswaps-decentralisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Glassnode analysts doubt Uniswap&#8217;s decentralisation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Uniswap governance tokens are not locked in a smart contract and reside on ordinary Ethereum addresses. This is the conclusion reached by analysts at Glassnode. In their view, this raises questions about the degree of decentralisation of the leading non-custodial exchange.<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%24UNI&#038;src=ctag&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">$UNI<\/a> token aims to transition <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UniswapProtocol?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@UniswapProtocol<\/a> into a decentralized, community-owned protocol \ud83e\udd84<\/p>\n<p>But the team and investor tokens, which are supposed to vest over 4 years, are not subject to a programmatic lock-up.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story \ud83d\udc47<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3B0Mda3G38\">https:\/\/t.co\/3B0Mda3G38<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 glassnode (@glassnode) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/glassnode\/status\/1309196658408853505?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>On September 17, Uniswap <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/uniswap-launches-uni-governance-token\">released<\/a> the governance token UNI with a total supply of 1 billion. 60% of the tokens were allocated to the community \u2014 they will be distributed over four years. The team will receive 21.51% of the tokens under the vesting programme. A further 17.80% of the UNI were allocated to investors, 0.069% to project advisors.<\/p>\n<p>Five days later, 184,000 users of the exchange <a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/uniswap-distributed-113-17-million-uni-tokens-among-users\">received<\/a> 113.17 million of the 150 million UNI earmarked for the airdrop.<\/p>\n<p>Glassnode analyst Liesl Eichholz is struck by the absence of a vesting schedule details in these events, and by the fact that the community-designated tokens are not subject to a programmatic lock-up.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">1\/ The 400mm <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%24UNI&#038;src=ctag&#038;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">$UNI<\/a> allocated to the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/UniswapProtocol?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@UniswapProtocol<\/a> team and investors is supposed to vest over 4 years \u2014 but no vesting schedule has been published, and the tokens are currently liquid.<\/p>\n<p>Why aren\u2019t these vesting tokens under some kind of timelock?<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Liesl Eichholz (@liesleichholz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/liesleichholz\/status\/1309209834731036673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>According to her observations, the tokens are distributed <a href=\"https:\/\/etherscan.io\/token\/0x1f9840a85d5af5bf1d1762f925bdaddc4201f984#balances\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">across 43 addresses<\/a>. It remains unclear who owns them: the project\u2019s founder Hayden Adams or investors such as Paradigm.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-conversation=\"none\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">5\/ The UNI reserved for the team, investors &#038; advisors have been split across 43 different addresses.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, it is unclear who controls the keys to these tokens. Is it <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/haydenzadams?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@haydenzadams<\/a>? Or have they already been distributed to investors like <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/paradigm?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@paradigm<\/a>? It is impossible to tell.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Liesl Eichholz (@liesleichholz) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/liesleichholz\/status\/1309209841722945537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 24, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In the report, it is noted that for this reason, in the early stages of governance the Uniswap team and investors will hold disproportionately large influence.<\/p>\n<p>In Glassnode, the motivation was seen as an effort to shield the protocol from radical changes in the early stage of the shift to decentralised governance, even at the cost of depriving the community of token rights.<\/p>\n<p>Eichholz suggested that Uniswap took this step deliberately to deter attacks by centralised exchanges. She notes that to submit a governance proposal one must hold 10 million UNI. Today only major venues such as Binance hold that amount. In her view, Uniswap&#8217;s actions have made such attacks pointless.<\/p>\n<p>Eichholz laments that the exchange&#8217;s leadership did not brief the community on its actions.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/news\/ricardo-spani-most-defi-projects-lack-genuine-decentralisation\">stated<\/a> that decentralisation was lacking in most DeFi protocols, a point previously raised by Riccardo Spagni, former Monero lead maintainer and Tari co-founder.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.me\/forkloglive\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog FEED<\/a> \u2014 the full news feed, <a href=\"https:\/\/telegram.me\/forklog\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">ForkLog<\/a> \u2014 the key news and polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Uniswap governance tokens are not locked in a smart contract and reside on ordinary Ethereum addresses. This is the conclusion reached by analysts at Glassnode. In their view, this raises questions about the degree of decentralisation of the leading non-custodial exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[130,1093,1273,1391],"class_list":["post-29219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-decentralization","tag-defi","tag-glassnode","tag-uniswap-uni"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"19","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29221,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29219\/revisions\/29221"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}