Fears Rise For Dharma Control Regarding New Uniswap Proposal

Uniswap, one of the world’s biggest decentralized exchanges, is currently in the process of its first-ever governance vote. This vote, submitted by Dharma, the open-source lending protocol, has seen some members of the community raise concerns. Their concern is that this proposal, should it be successful, will allow Dharma to have far too much control regarding Uniswap and its future direction.

Giving Greater Power To Centralized Holders

The proposal itself suggests that the total amount of quorum thresholds and token governance needs to be reduced, with the voting ending on the 19th of October, 2020. What this means, is that the top holders of the protocol, including Dharma, would gain significant powers regarding decisions on Uniswap at large.

David Felton, a Uniswap community member, more commonly known in those circles as Hiturunk, gave out a blog post recently with his opinions. He discussed how this proposal would be counterintuitive for a goal of complete decentralization, arguing that Dharma already holds substantial voting power as is. He highlighted this by explaining that Dharma already holds a single wallet containing 15 million UNI. Even if the proposal failed to pass, Felton warned that Dharma’s current superiority is already threatening the sovereignty of Uniswap.

A Cry For Help (On Seemingly Deaf Ears)

Should this vote be passed, a quorum will then be capable of being achieved by way of just the two top holders: Dharma and Gauntlet, a blockchain simulation platform. These two entities hold a combined voting power of 30 million UNI, which is enough to achieve the minimum quorum as proposed by the vote.

Felton detailed that such a vote will entrench Dharma so deeply into the Uniswap governance protocol, that it might as well just own the DEX outright. As such, Felton called for all those who can vote, to vote against it, urging them to keep the quorum as how the developer intended it to be.

However, with more than 30 million votes already in favor of it, with a subsequent 2%, or just 625,00 against, it’s one tall order to make.  The probabilities seem grim.

Dharma Isn’t Pulling Punches

It should be noted that even those for this proposal, like DeFiPrime, a DeFi blog, have stipulations that things need to change after the vote succeeds as well. In short, DeFiPrime suggests that this “voting cartel” Dharma had created to overcome the default threshold needs to be dissolved.

Those that criticize it, such as Chris Blec, the founder of DeFi Watch, have been blocked by Dharma after the man had questioned the protocol’s motives behind this proposal, which is always a bad sign in the best of cases.

https://twitter.com/ChrisBlec/status/1315858492880826369

Alongside this, Blec was adamant that Dharma should drop their label of “DeFi” if the entity itself is only keen on becoming a centralized exchange. He highlighted that Dharma, with its apparent interests for business, cannot have such a level of control regarding Uniswap and its decision.