Uniswap Unveils Funding Plan For Ecosystem Revamp As UNI Price Hits 4-Month Low

In a move aimed at advancing their vision of creating a self-sovereign Internet with a permissionless alternative to traditional finance (TradFi), the Uniswap Foundation (UF) has submitted a proposal to secure the second tranche of funding. 

The desired funding, totaling $62.37 million, will be put to an on-chain vote scheduled for Wednesday, October 4th, with a 10% buffer included to mitigate price volatility.

The separation of the funding request into two tranches was initially established to allow the UF to finalize its legal entity and obtain non-profit status from the Internal US Revenue Service (IRS), as the company is based in Brooklyn New York, ensuring clarity on tax implications before receiving the larger portion of funds. The UF obtained this status in the spring of this year, prompting the request for the second tranche.

The first tranche of funding, approved by Uniswap governance last year, aimed for $20 million but experienced a decrease in value due to a drop in the price of UNI, the native token of the Uniswap Protocol. 

Consequently, the Uniswap Foundation received $17.3 million worth of UNI, creating a remainder of $56.7 million to be requested in the second tranche. A 10% buffer of $5.67 million has been included to account for potential price fluctuations, bringing the total request to $62.37 million.

The Uniswap Foundation plans to receive the funds in UNI, with the amount determined using a 30-day UNI/USD TWAP (Time-Weighted Average Price). The pricing and its source will be explicitly noted in the on-chain proposal to ensure transparency in the process.

Regarding future operations, Uniswap currently holds 452,534 UNI tokens for employee vesting, valued at around $1.9 million. Factoring in a capital loss of $259,000 and the current UNI price, the UF has approximately $9.24 million remaining for operational expenses, expected to sustain them until Q4 2024. 

Lastly, according to the proposal discussion, the Uniswap Foundation anticipates revisiting governance in mid-2024 to extend its operational runway.

Uniswap’s native token, UNI, has been consolidated between the price range of $4.198 and $4.311 over the past week. 

This price stagnation comes from the overall market trend and a bearish macro outlook, with the token experiencing a 0.5% decline in the fourteen-day timeframe. Furthermore, UNI has dropped 9.6% over the past 30 days, reaching a four-month low.

In the short term, UNI bulls must defend the current price floor to establish a strong support level. They aim to surpass the resistance walls at $4.418 and $4.487 to break the downtrend structure and potentially rally toward $6.259. It is worth noting that this price level is still below UNI’s annual high of $7.629.

According to Token Terminal data, Uniswap’s circulating market cap currently stands at $3.67 billion, experiencing a recent decrease of 6.66%. The fully diluted market cap, which considers the total number of UNI tokens that could enter circulation, stands at $4.27 billion, displaying an 8.15% decrease.

The total value locked (TVL) in Uniswap, representing the amount of cryptocurrency assets deposited and utilized within the platform, has recently declined by 5.31%. This decline reflects the broader Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector’s challenges.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com