Can the Uniswap Foundation's large-scale investment plan solve the token value capture dilemma?

Original Article Title: Uniswap Foundation votes on a massive $165.5m USD funding.

Original Article Author: Ignas, DeFi Researcher

Original Article Translation: Tim, PANews

The Uniswap Foundation has voted on a $165.5 million USD investment plan, but why?

Because the performance following the release of Uniswap v4 and Unichain has fallen far short of market expectations.

Over a month:

· Uni v4 has a total value locked (TVL) of only $85 million

· Unichain has a TVL of only $8.2 million

To foster growth, the Uniswap Foundation has proposed allocating $165.5 million in funding as follows:

· $95.4 million for grants (developer grants, core contributors, validators);

· $25.1 million for operations (team expansion, governance tooling);

· $45 million for liquidity incentives.

As you can see, Uni v4 is not just a DEX but also a liquidity platform, with Hooks being applications built on top of it.

Hooks are expected to drive the ecosystem growth of Uni v4, hence the need to expedite this process through a grant program.

Detailed breakdown of the grant budget:

4500 million USD in Liquidity Provider (LP) incentives will be used as follows:

· $24 million (dispersed over 6 months): To incentivize liquidity migration from other platforms to Uni v4;

· $21 million (dispersed over 3 months): To drive Unichain's TVL from the current $8.2 million to $750 million.

On the other hand, Aerodrome mints AERO tokens worth around 40-50 million US dollars monthly for liquidity provider (LP) incentives.

The proposal has passed the temperature check stage but still faces some criticism:

· Amid industry landscape changes, Aave proposes a weekly buyback of 1 million US dollars' worth of AAVE tokens, Maker plans a monthly buyback of 30 million US dollars, and UNI holders are treated as a "cash cow" on the brink of being drained of value, with their token value never being captured.

· UNI tokens lack a fee-sharing mechanism, while Uniswap Labs has earned 171 million US dollars through frontend fees over two years.

The key to the entire system lies in Uniswap's organizational design:

· Uniswap Labs: Focuses on protocol technical development;

· Uniswap Foundation: Drives ecosystem growth, governance, and financial planning (such as grant funding, liquidity incentives).

Quite a savvy legal team.

Aave and Maker have established a closer interest alignment with token holders, and I don't understand why Uniswap's frontend fees cannot be shared with UNI holders.

In conclusion, other criticisms mainly focus on the core team's high salaries, Gauntlet's responsibility for liquidity incentive execution, and the establishment of a new type of centralized DAO legal structure (DUNA).

As a small governance representative for Uniswap, I voted in favor of this proposal, but I still have significant concerns about the future of UNI holders: the incentive mechanism has failed to align with holders' interests.

However, I am a loyal fan of Uniswap and highly appreciate its driving role in the DeFi space. The current lackluster growth of Uni v4 and Unichain calls for the introduction of incentive measures to facilitate development.

The next Uni DAO vote should focus on the value capture mechanism of the UNI token.