Uniswap Community Proposes Creation of Uniswap Foundation to Boost Exchange
Two Uniswap community members have submitted a governance proposal to create the Uniswap Foundation, which has the mission of supporting the decentralized growth and sustainability of the Uniswap Protocol and its supporting ecosystem and community.
The Uniswap Foundation will be a Delaware-based corporation founded by Devin Walsh and Ken Ng, according to the proposal document published on August 4. Walsh will serve as the Executive Director, Ng will serve as Head of Operations, and together they will build a team of 12. They will also conduct interviews for a third board member during the first three months of operations.
Devin Walsh has been involved in the crypto field since 2016. She previously conducted independent research for MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative 2, worked on decentralized identity at uPort (ConsenSys), and led protocol and venture investments at CoinFund. She recently resigned as Chief of Staff at Uniswap Labs in order to propose the creation of the Uniswap Foundation.
Ken Ng has served the Uniswap ecosystem as Lead of the Uniswap Grants Program 1 for the past one and a half years. He served as COO of Slingshot Finance 3 and as cofounder of his nonprofit eduDAO, which helps raise funds for students and teachers in the Bronx, New York City.
The Uniswap Foundation will provide grants to builders, researchers, organizers, academics, analysts, and more to grow the Protocol and plan for its future. This will make it easier to govern the protocol and community treasury, and to navigate the broader ecosystem.
The Uniswap Foundation is an independent entity whose mandate will be to grow Uniswap’s usage, reinvigorate the governance process, and advocate for the protocol and community. To achieve those goals, it will build its own lean team, and provide grants to, support, and/or work alongside a number of existing and new values- and mission-aligned organizations.
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To fund these efforts, Walsh and Ng are requesting an operating budget of $14 million to cover a full team for three years, and a $60 million expanded Uniswap Grants Program budget to cover over three years. They are requesting $74 million total, which will be broken into two disbursements, with a first disbursement of $20 million. They are also requesting 2.5M UNI to participate in governance, primarily through delegation.
