Uniswap协议费用分配提案引爆市场，未来走向如何？
Original Author: defioasis
Original Editor: Colin Wu
On the evening of February 23rd, Uniswap Foundation's Governance Lead, Erin Koen, launched a proposal on the Uniswap Governance Forum suggesting the implementation of a fee mechanism to reward UNI token holders who have delegated and staked their tokens. Since Uniswap announced token airdrops in late September 2020, there have been discussions regarding whether UNI should capture protocol fees to increase token utility, but most of these discussions have not led to any concrete actions. This proposal, put forward by the Uniswap Foundation, officially brings the utility of UNI tokens to the governance level for discussion, which has generated excitement among many holders and led to the increase in the value of UNI and other DeFi protocol tokens.
First and foremost, it should be clarified that this proposal is made by the representatives of Uniswap Foundation, which is different from Uniswap Labs. Uniswap Labs is responsible for the development, maintenance, and upgrade of the Uniswap protocol, playing a core role in technical development and innovation. Essentially, Uniswap Labs is a commercial company. On the other hand, Uniswap Foundation primarily focuses on the governance and community development of the Uniswap protocol, acting as a non-profit organization. Uniswap Labs tends to consider issues from the perspective of the protocol/company, while Uniswap Foundation represents the interests of the community to a certain extent. It is worth noting that Uniswap Labs' official announcement and founder Hayden's involvement in the discussions have been minimal.
Secondly, it is necessary to understand what protocol fees are. Currently, there are two types of fees: front-end fees and LP fees. Front-end fees refer to the 0.15% fee that will be charged starting in mid-October 2023 when executing transactions through Uniswap Labs' front-end, i.e., the fee collected by and paid to Uniswap Labs through the official Uniswap front-end. Hayden stated that the purpose of collecting this fee is to provide funds for the sustainable operation of Uniswap Labs. LP fees refer to the fees in the Uniswap pools that traders pay to liquidity providers. For example, in the highest TVL pool in Uniswap V3, WBTC/ETH, the fee collected is 0.3%. In this proposed plan, it is explicitly stated that protocol fees are a portion of the LP fees and can be set as 0, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/9, or 1/10 (currently set as 0), and the specific fraction can be adjusted through governance.
(Data Source: https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/uniswap)
According to the data from Token Terminal on February 25th, the annualized LP fee of Uniswap is approximately $626 million. Assuming the proposal is approved and 1/10 - 1/4 of the LP fees are allocated as protocol fees to UNI holders, UNI holders can receive approximately $6.262 - 15.65 million in annualized dividends. The current market capitalization of UNI is about $8 billion, and the ratio of market capitalization to annualized dividends is approximately between 51.1-127.8. Of course, this is only a simple calculation reference and is not an investment basis.
Finally, this proposal is still in the proposal and community discussion stage, and whether it will be approved depends on the final voting results of the community and UNI delegators representing multiple forces. Uniswap Foundation believes that if there are no major obstacles, it is expected to release a Snapshot vote on March 1st and an on-chain vote on March 8th. As an early investor in Uniswap, a16z may play a key role in future voting on this proposal. According to Arkham data, addresses marked as a16z (and suspected a16z) may control approximately 60 million UNI.
Of course, everything is still uncertain until the dust settles, and the outcome of the proposal is still variable. However, this is ultimately an attempt to transition to a utility token. Even if this proposal ultimately fails, it is believed that there will still be other institutions or individuals striving to transform UNI into a utility token. If the proposal is ultimately passed and partially erodes LP revenue as dividends for token holders, the harm to LP and how to better balance the interests of UNI holders and LP with the development of the protocol will become new governance points.
In a few years of development, Uniswap has become a Beta that can represent the entire crypto industry after BTC and ETH. Now the foundation has officially proposed to empower UNI, which may benefit from the successful litigation of Grayscale and Ripple, the smooth passage of spot BTC ETF, and active trading, making US regulatory policies relatively more moderate. At the same time, this may also serve as an example for other protocol developers or teams, especially in the US. For example, Pacman, the founder of Blur and Blast, expressed approval of the proposal made by the Uniswap Foundation and hopes that Blur can learn from it. (Note: The NFT trading market Blur token BLUR is similar to UNI, both of which are governance tokens without empowerment.)
Whether it is UNI or BLUR, the protocols they represent are leaders in their respective fields. Uniswap occupies about 60% of the market share in the DEX field, not only having outstanding technological innovation and market influence but also making indelible contributions to the development of the crypto industry. These are the focal points that we continue to pay attention to. For Uniswap, empowering UNI may be just an icing on the cake, and the upcoming v4 hook may be more exciting.
