Uniswap, the most successful American Internet Fintech company benefitting from the Web3 dividend.

Uniswap America's Most Successful Internet Fintech Company Capitalizing on the Web3 Dividend

Ultimately, users are still paying for faith. But there is also this saying: assets without empowerment are the most imaginative assets.

Original Author: Jaleel

With the support and manipulation of a series of VCs such as a16z and LianGuairadigm, Uniswap has embarked on a clearly distinctive path of operation and management. After the FTX collapse, Uniswap has become the most successful internet fintech company in the current Web3 world.

Up to now, Uniswap’s market share in the DEX market has exceeded 80%, with a weekly trading volume of up to $16 billion, far surpassing its competitors. After the team announced the activation of front-end transaction fee functionality, their strategy of separating the team from the protocol has become even more apparent, providing a viable compromise for Web3 entrepreneurs.

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Team Operationalization: Compliance, Compliance, and Compliance

As an absolute leader in the DeFi field and a typical symbol of the Web3 permissionless world, Uniswap’s every move affects the direction of the entire industry. However, upon closer observation, we can see that Uniswap is not like a “Web3 team” as defined in the mainstream, but rather an American internet startup.

It can be said that Uniswap’s true uniqueness in the Web3 world is reflected to some extent in its “corporatization” of team operation and management.

“All-American Team”: Uniswap’s executive appointments and employee management

From the personnel appointments of Uniswap Labs executives, you cannot see this as a Web3 startup team at all. Uniswap has the complete package, from regulatory compliance to experience in internet giants.

On May 19, 2022, Uniswap made an official announcement in the Blog, stating that Salman Banaei will serve as the Director of Policy for Uniswap Labs.

Prior to joining Uniswap Labs, Salman worked in public service at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and later was responsible for public policy at Chainalysis. During his tenure at the CFTC, Salman led the Dodd-Frank Act team in implementing reforms in the U.S. derivatives market after the financial crisis, which was recognized by then CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler (yes, him) and was awarded the Outstanding Employee Award.

In the appointment announcement at Uniswap Labs, Salman wrote: “Uniswap Labs reflects the goals of the Dodd-Frank Act to democratize the market and Nakomoto’s goal of reducing friction in value transfer. The Uniswap protocol it created is a breakthrough invention that can achieve the goals of the series of Dodd-Frank reforms that we worked hard to implement at the CFTC. Like previous internet protocols, the true potential of this technology can only be realized through constructive and active participation by the public sector leadership.”

In March earlier this year, Uniswap hired Chad DePue, former Senior Director of Engineering at Snap Inc., the parent company of Snap Chat, as Vice President of Engineering at Uniswap Labs.

During his tenure at Snap, Chad DePue led the development of popular mini programs such as Snap Minis, Snap Kit, PlayCanvas, and later served as CTO at Whisper App. After leaving Whisper App, Chad served as Vice President of Engineering and Developer Tools at BlackBerry and Microsoft respectively. Joining Uniswap, Chad’s main task is to bring his experience in building simple, secure, and seamless products (including mobile products) to the Uniswap Labs team.

In his appointment announcement, Chad DePue stated that Hayden, the founder of Uniswap, was an important reason for him to join the Uniswap team. “When you meet Hayden, you quickly realize that he is one of the few people with the foresight and wisdom to create significant impact… Hayden and others’ strong leadership based on an inclusive vision and moral commitment is crucial for Web3 to attract the next wave of users.”

On July 21, Uniswap also announced the addition of heavyweight executive Will Ruben as Vice President of Product.

Will Ruben previously led the team responsible for Web3 social experiences in Coinbase and its wallet application. Prior to Coinbase, Will spent 9 years at Meta (formerly Facebook), where he served as the head of Instagram’s Feed and Relevance team, leading the release of key products such as Instagram’s content ranking algorithm and interest search.

In his appointment announcement, Will wrote, “After working at large technology companies for ten years, I was attracted by the challenges and opportunities of leading a smaller, more entrepreneurial company with great development potential over the next decade… Without simple and high-quality user experiences built on web3 protocols, we cannot unlock universal ownership or make the global financial system more inclusive. Uniswap Labs is at the core of this work, and I am excited to bring my experience in building consumer products at scale, especially mobile products, to this outstanding team.”

Compared to most leading Web3 projects, Uniswap has a very comprehensive and compliant process for employee recruitment and management.

According to BlockBeats, the Uniswap team currently has hundreds of employees and clear functional divisions. When you open the Uniswap official website’s recruiting page, you’ll first see this paragraph:

“The Uniswap protocol is the largest decentralized trading and automated liquidity protocol on Ethereum… The Uniswap Labs team is a major contributor to the Uniswap protocol and is now focused on building a suite of products to support the Uniswap ecosystem. Our team is one of the most influential teams in the cryptocurrency field. Our headquarters are located in the SoHo district of New York City, and depending on the position, we can choose to work partially or completely remotely.”

Currently, BlockBeats sees on the official website that Uniswap Labs has three main departments: Engineering, Growth and Strategy, and Finance and Compliance. Among them, the Engineering department has the most positions, with 7 openings. When you enter the application details page, you can learn about the benefits for full-time employees at Uniswap Labs:

1. Minimum annual salary of $180,000 to $220,000, disclosed according to the New York City salary transparency law;

2. Other compensation elements such as equity and tokens are determined based on specific job types;

3. Unlimited and encouraged vacation, as well as 16 weeks of paid parental leave;

4. Reimbursement of all medical expenses for the employee and their family;

5.401(k) plan (US pension plan);

6. $1,500 education allowance per year;

7. Remote employees receive a home office setup allowance, while New York headquarters employees receive lunch.

In addition, Uniswap Labs is also an EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) employer and provides equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with disabilities, in accordance with US law. According to the official website, Uniswap Labs aims to have at least 7% of its workforce composed of individuals with disabilities. For this reason, applicants are required to fill out a detailed questionnaire when applying for a position and must complete it again every 5 years after being hired.

However, there is one prerequisite to enjoy these attractive benefits: you must be a legal worker in the United States, and “all benefits are subject to applicable taxes.”

Uniswap application interface questionnaire, image source: Uniswap.org

Previously, BlockBeats reporters had previously published frontline reports during the Token2049 event. Mary-Catherine, the CEO of Uniswap Labs, stated during the event that Uniswap’s team is based in the United States and has a physical office in New York City. However, despite this, Uniswap’s products, wallets, and web applications are globally available. Uniswap is actively focusing on growth in the Asian market and striving to make Uniswap an international product brand.

Will Ruben, who joined as Vice President of Product in July last year, is actually a local New Yorker. He wrote in his appointment announcement, “As a native New Yorker, I believe there is no better place than New York City to build this future, with Hayden, MC, Cal, Chad, and the talented team at Uniswap Labs.”

In fact, there is an interesting thing here: many leading Web3 decentralized brands are part of a Web3 elite circle similar to a “New York small group.” The most well-known among them is probably BanklessDAO.

BanklessDAO is also located in New York and maintains an excellent relationship with Uniswap Labs. If you pay attention, you will notice that many of Uniswap’s products are released to the public through BanklessDAO’s media channels, including heavyweight product iterations like Uniswap V4. Of course, these are all stories for another time.

Founder of BanklessDAO and Uniswap founder Hayden (below) announced Uniswap V4 live, image source from YouTube

The team and protocol are separated, Uniswap Labs becomes a centralized startup company creating open source products

With the recent announcement of frontend fees by Uniswap, many in the community believe that Uniswap Labs is gradually dissociating itself from the Uniswap protocol. However, this goal was actually set from the beginning of the company.

On August 11, 2021, in order to differentiate Uniswap Labs from the Uniswap protocol, < a href=”/?s=official announcement”>official announcement was made to update its logo. Today, users can also find detailed < a href=”/?s=Logo trademark usage guidelines”>Logo trademark usage guidelines on the Uniswap official website.

Uniswap Grants has hired renowned designer Timothy Luke to create new logos for the Uniswap protocol and Uniswap Labs separately, in order to visually distinguish between the Uniswap protocol and Uniswap Labs, and further define their respective functions, responsibilities, and governance tasks.

Uniswap updated its logo in 2021, with the left being the Uniswap protocol logo and the right being the Uniswap Labs logo, image source from Uniswap.org

The official announcement stated: “Sometimes the two can be confused, but in reality they are completely different things: the Uniswap protocol is a set of on-chain, immutable smart contracts that facilitate peer-to-peer transactions, while Uniswap Labs refers to the software development studio that builds and maintains products usually related to the protocol. Uniswap Labs is one of the hundreds of companies building products on top of the protocol and may one day build products far away from the protocol.“

Subsequently, on April 11 of the following year, Uniswap Labs officially < a href=”/?s=established”>established Uniswap Labs Venture, led by Teo Leibowitz and MC Lader, Chief Operating Officer of Uniswap Labs.

According to the official announcement, the function of Uniswap Labs Venture is “to support projects at various stages of Web3, from infrastructure frameworks to development tools, as well as consumer-facing applications.” At the same time, Venture actively participates in the governance of multiple protocols to support their development. According to BlockBeats statistics, since its establishment in April last year, Uniswap Labs Venture has invested in nine projects including LianGuaira Finance, Wallet Connect, and Rain, and participated in the governance processes of multiple protocols including MakerDAO, Aave, Compound, and ENS.

The main purpose of Uniswap establishing the Venture department is to further clarify the division of functions of Uniswap Grants and separate the economic activities and revenue of the Uniswap Labs team from the development of the Uniswap protocol ecosystem. After the establishment of the Venture section, Uniswap established the Uniswap Foundation in the same year, which operates independently from other entities in the Uniswap Labs ecosystem.

According to the official website, Uniswap Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Delaware, USA, with the goal of supporting decentralized finance, decentralization, and sustainability. The funding for Uniswap Foundation is provided through community governance proposals approved by the Uniswap community. It supports the DeFi community through three pillars of growth, innovation, and management, and provides resources and support initiatives to drive the long-term sustainability of DeFi.

One of the main objectives of the Uniswap Protocol and team is to gain more flexibility or even advantages in terms of regulatory compliance.

As reported earlier by BlockBeats, after the SEC labeled HEX as an unregistered security in its lawsuit against Richard Schueler and his project Hex, Uniswap immediately removed the HEX token from the Uniswap trading interface. Now, in the “Unsupported Tokens” list on the Uniswap interface, the HEX token is accompanied by a general explanation stating that the protocol prohibits tokens that “violate trademarks, have been proven scams, or are based on other legal considerations.”

The Uniswap web interface blocks trading of HEX tokens. Image source: Uniswap.org

In addition, in a collective lawsuit in April of this year, a judge in the Southern District of New York dismissed the accusations against Uniswap, and Uniswap founder Hayden called it a “huge victory.”

Court documents from the Southern District of New York state that the Uniswap platform is capable of and, in many cases, operates legally. The plaintiffs did not transact with the Uniswap platform and protocol, and current securities laws do not seem to cover the responsibility of DeFi protocols themselves for fraudulent behavior by their users.

The judge believed that the plaintiffs were harmed by fraudulent token issuers who took advantage of Uniswap’s core contracts and relays for front-running, while Uniswap merely played the role of a platform provider. At least under U.S. securities laws, this does not mean that Uniswap is responsible for fraud or the resulting damages.

This ruling is particularly interesting, especially in comparison to the arrest of the Tornado Cash team, who also had a similar role as a protocol or platform developer.

Recently, the reason Uniswap has been able to introduce front-end fees is also due to the separation of the team and protocol. As a trading protocol that deals with tokens or “unregistered securities,” Uniswap cannot generate revenue for the team by directly charging fees due to regulatory reasons. However, Uniswap Labs can create compliant front-end user products based on this open protocol and generate revenue through these products.

If a token, like HEX, is being sued by the SEC or other regulatory authorities, its trading on the front-end can be immediately halted, allowing the team and the product itself to avoid potential regulatory risks.

Roman Dualism Governance: Being a VC’s Best Friend

Hayden’s innovation and forward-thinking mindset have created opportunities for the development of Uniswap, but at the same time, early investors and capital’s influence on Uniswap has become hard to ignore. Capital support has provided Uniswap with more resources and development opportunities, but it has also brought more challenges in governance and direction.

The entry and support of capital have, on one hand, brought rapid project development and community expansion, but on the other hand, it has changed the power structure and raised suspicions of project hijacking. Some voices in the community believe that capital no longer satisfied with the role of a supporter but is trying to exert more influence in the decision-making process, even threatening the decentralized nature of the project.

Drama with Early Investors

Ric Burton, the former CEO of Balance.io, sparked widespread attention earlier this year with a public dispute on Twitter with Uniswap founder Hayden Adams. Ric used revealed insider information and some screenshots as evidence to try to prove that his relationship with Hayden Adams was different from what the public knows.

Going back to 2018, Ric described the deep friendship he had with Hayden and the joint efforts they made for the cryptocurrency industry and the Uniswap project. At that time, Ric was the CEO of Balance.io, a company that focused on providing interface services for Dapps on Ethereum. Ric believed that most Dapps had significant room for improvement, so he funded multiple projects, including WalletConnect, The Graph, and Uniswap.

Early entrepreneur Hayden, image source from the internet

Hayden’s unique insights into automated market makers (AMMs) and his enthusiasm for the project sparked Ric’s strong interest, leading him to offer help. During that time, their relationship was exceptionally close, and Ric even said he was willing to be a “bulletproof” friend for Hayden.

However, things started to change over time, especially in March 2019. During the funeral of his grandmother, Ric received an email from one of Balance’s co-founders, telling him that he needed to step down as CEO. Meanwhile, the situation for Uniswap was improving, and Hayden successfully raised $1 million in funding. Ric initially thought he would be invited to participate in the project, but LianGuairadigm’s involvement changed everything.

Feeling deeply betrayed by Hayden when he discovered he didn’t receive any dividends from Uniswap, Ric decided to sue Hayden in a fit of anger. It wasn’t until the UNI Token plan began that Hayden brought up the issue of “repayment,” but with the condition that Ric sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Ric’s decision to sue Hayden was a result of his anger.

In response, Hayden stated that Ric’s remarks were highly misleading and outright lies. “At that time, Ric Burton did have the opportunity to invest in Uniswap, and I even sent him a blank Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) so that he could fill in the amount he wanted to invest. However, he chose not to do so because his company, Balance, could only sustain about one month of operation at that time.”

Hayden and Ric’s chat records, image source from the internet

In the end, both sides took a step back, and Hayden expressed gratitude to Ric for his role in the development of Uniswap and no longer responded further.

To outsiders, it seems that Drama with Ric has left Hayden with the impression of “clashing with investors”. But in reality, Uniswap is closer to a joint-stock company controlled by a board of directors in the Web3 community than any other project, and that board of directors consists of several VC giants behind Uniswap.

“Major Shareholders” Invasion, Capital Support and Coercion of Uniswap

On August 6, 2020, according to SEC documents, Uniswap development company Universal Navigation Inc. completed a $11 million financing round on June 5, led by a16z, with participation from USV, LianGuairadigm, Version, and others. A group of Silicon Valley Web2 capital giants joined Uniswap at this time.

In the grand governance game of Uniswap DAO, a16z is undoubtedly a key player. They not only actively participated with their 15 million votes UNI but also entrusted the governance rights of about 40 million votes UNI to multiple external institutions. One of the most impressive examples for the community is when deciding to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain, more than 80 million votes UNI participated, far exceeding 50% of the votes UNI participating in governance voting.

Uniswap originally planned to enter BSC through the wormhole, but a16z unexpectedly voted against it, hoping to open a path for their investment LayerZero. At the same time, a16z’s competitor Jump Trading explicitly stated that they support Wormhole. When the dust settled, Wormhole became the bridge for Uniswap DAO governance based on Ethereum on BNB Chain because of the voting advantage of the UNI tokens it received.

In terms of absolute votes, the so-called community of Uniswap is insignificant, and the real “deciders” of Uniswap development are still the capital giants behind it.

According to DAO governance researcher @lurenbianobservation, since the entry of VC giants, the heat test of Uniswap DAO has soared from the initial participation of only 34,000 votes UNI to nearly 300 million votes in the latest proposal. From official data, it can be seen that a total of 31 proposals have been submitted, of which 28 have been implemented, demonstrating a pass rate of up to 90%.

In these proposals, multi-chain deployment has become the main theme, but there is not a strong regularity in the change of votes. @lurenbian told BlockBeats in an interview that for operations like multi-chain deployment, VCs will almost always approve it as long as it is justified. For projects on the target chain, being able to access Uniswap liquidity is considered to have all the benefits and no harm, which is also a win-win situation for VCs.

Uniswap governance proposal statistics, image source from @lurenbian

There is also the case of the Educational Fund. After selling 500,000 UNI and receiving 10.2 million USDC, the proposal regarding the DeFi Education Fund (DEF) sparked strong dissatisfaction within the Uniswap community. The proposal ultimately received a 72.64% voting support and, after announcing a allocation of 1 million UNI from the Uniswap treasury, DEF will disclose a detailed budget within 90 days. However, things didn’t go as expected, as DEF suddenly announced that they had already sold 50% of the allocated UNI without the community knowing how the funds were distributed.

Some observers from the community raised doubts, suggesting that the proposal was likely led by Uniswap’s major investor, a16z, and wondered if there was a case of “proposing and voting for oneself”. Although all doubts vanished when Uniswap’s founder, Hayden, expressed support for DEF, the community gradually realized that in the so-called governance of Uniswap DAO, only the “major shareholders and the board of directors” have the final say.

The product strategy follows a Web2 approach: Orthodoxy takes a backseat, market share becomes the core

In the pursuit of market advantage, Uniswap clearly did not simply follow the traditional Web3 team’s concepts of openness and decentralization. Uniswap Labs instead emphasizes a Web2 product strategy aimed at quickly attracting and retaining users, ensuring its leading position in the competition among decentralized trading platforms.

Commercial license, plagiarism – a classic internet story

In June of this year, Uniswap announced the launch of version 4, nearly two years after the previous release, causing a stir within the community. The introduction of Hooks in V4 was dubbed by many as the “DEX killer,” but what caught more attention than the significant product updates was the continuation of the Business Source License (BSL), which had already been implemented and had doubled its effective duration from V3.

The Business Source License aims to find a balance between the spirit of open source and commercial needs. During its valid period, third parties are not allowed to use the source code for any commercial activities without permission. For Uniswap, it is another business advantage besides its product innovation. It was precisely because of the protection offered by BSL that Uniswap V3 flourished in its time. However, after the two-year validity of BSL for V3 ended, various V3 Forks emerged one after another.

Therefore, when Uniswap implemented the BSL commercial license for version 4, this decision once again caused significant controversy within the developer community.

Uniswap founder, Hayden, firmly believes that BSL is the right decision for the Uniswap community, stating in response to a question from BlockBeats at the ETH LianGuairis event: “This entirely depends on the governance decision.” Hayden expressed that UNI holders who disagree with this choice can propose changes through governance voting. However, in the eyes of most, there is no substantial difference between “them” and Uniswap’s “VC shareholders.”

Interestingly, just when the “license dispute” storm surrounding V4 version has not yet subsided, Uniswap is once again caught up in a “plagiarism controversy”.

On July 17th of this year, BlockBeats reported that decentralized exchange platform Uniswap announced the launch of the unmanaged, Dutch auction-based protocol UniswapX. According to official announcements and documentation, UniswapX will gradually achieve various functions such as aggregated liquidity sources, MEV resistance, and gas-free transactions, with the hope of gradually rivaling centralized exchanges (CEXs) as a decentralized exchange (DEX).

UniswapX was highly anticipated upon its release, with LianGuairadigm researcher Dan Robinson giving high praise to UniswapX on social media, saying, “I believe UniswapX changes the game rules for decentralized exchanges, MEV, and interoperability.”

However, the community quickly pointed out that UniswapX was copying the CoWSwap mechanism, and the previously released V4 version was accused of plagiarizing CrocSwap. Curve Finance responded to Dan Robinson through its official Twitter account, saying, “Dan, if you don’t mind me being straightforward. The game rules changed a long time ago: when 1inch first conducted high-quality aggregation and when CoWSwap introduced the Solvers model. UniswapX is good, but it is not an innovator, nor is it even the second player.”

CoWSwap’s official account also tweeted multiple times, welcoming Uniswap to further validate its own trading design and sarcastically implying that Uniswap was imitating its mechanism.

In response to the “V4 plagiarism issue,” a Uniswap Labs developer told BlockBeats that the Uniswap team had started developing the V4 version two years ago, but the CrocSwap team released its whitepaper early. However, the progress of product development was too slow, and they were forced to quickly release their new product only after Uniswap launched V4.

In fact, for Uniswap, open source and innovation are not the ultimate weapons for winning in the Web3 world. It is the product development and operational capabilities, just like an internet company. Once you have ideas and source code, the first consideration should be to register copyrights or BSL, and then enter the product development stage.

“We hope to see others make more innovative innovations instead of blindly forking and plagiarizing,” a Uniswap Labs developer told BlockBeats. From this perspective, it is quite understandable why Uniswap is playing it this way: by using BSL licenses to buy time for Labs team’s product innovations and simultaneously holding as much market share as possible. By the time the license expires, V5 or other new products with overwhelming strength are already launched, and most new users will already be Uniswap users.

As for projects like CrocSwap and CoWSwap, which adhere to Web3 open source ideals, on one hand, they lack the development capabilities of the numerous Uniswap team members, and on the other hand, their progress in product development is slow. In the future, they may only be left with the ability to “release whitepapers” and have lost almost all advantages in sustainable development.

Pursuing Market Share, Analyzing Uniswap’s Product Line

From the monthly trading volume data from 2019 to 2023, Uniswap has performed remarkably well, with trading volume far surpassing other DEXes. Despite being subject to a vampire attack by Sushi Swap in the early days, Uniswap’s market share has been steadily increasing since its inception and currently dominates the DEX market with an 80% share.

Uniswap trading volume and market share data, image source from Dune Analytics

Compared to the V3 version that was released two years after May 21, V4 has a more flexible asset composability and significantly reduces the gas fees required for providing liquidity and trading. One key improvement in V4 is the introduction of Hooks, which is a smart contract mechanism that enhances developers’ customizability. Hooks allow developers to “add logic” after or between swaps.

With the support of the new Hooks feature, developers can customize liquidity without having to create a new DEX. They can simply add desired elements to the Hooks and build a “customized venue” with a frontend page that meets their specific needs. This has led to community developers saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them. No need to build a DEX anymore.”

Through continuous iterations from V2, V3 to V4, and the introduction of UniswapX and Uniswap Wallet, Uniswap’s product line has gradually expanded and enriched, covering areas such as backend open protocols, third-party development APIs, liquidity aggregators, and mobile user gateways, reaching every aspect of Web3 transactions.

Uniswap Product Line Structure

In addition to the backend Uniswap open protocol, Uniswap Labs currently has three flagship products that have achieved significant market share in the Web3 trading market. They are the web-based trading application and mobile wallet, the V4 new version with Hooks and Singleton features, and the liquidity aggregator UniswapX with off-chain matching capabilities.

By leveraging the Uniswap open protocol and the global impact of V4, Uniswap has further squeezed out other DEX competitors in terms of protocol layer and contract backend calls, gradually achieving comprehensive dominance. Additionally, the team can enter the aggregator market through UniswapX and utilize their absolute advantage in protocol-level liquidity to suppress aggregators like 1inch and CoWSwap.

Furthermore, when users enter the Uniswap Web3 trading interface, they can see a clear link guiding them to download the Uniswap wallet.

With the promotion of the mobile Uniswap Wallet, the Uniswap team can attract both Web3 and Web2 users while also competing with Web3 wallet products launched by exchanges such as OKX and Bybit. Additionally, they can generate significant cash flow revenue for Uniswap Labs through the activation of frontend monetization features on both web and mobile platforms, without regulatory risks, achieving multiple goals with a single strategy.

Uniswap web interface, image source from Uniswap.org

When asked about the potential monopoly issue of Uniswap by BlockBeats, a team member raised his hand and said, “That’s not something we need to consider.”

Does UNI need empowerment? Uniswap explores the Web3 entrepreneurial path

“On November 2, 2018, Uniswap was publicly announced and deployed on the Ethereum mainnet. In an exciting and anxious moment, I published a tweet announcing the project to my around 200 followers. For many, this was the first time they had heard of this project. For me, it was the highlight of over a year of work and the tremendous help along the way. Uniswap changed my life.”

In the official Uniswap Blog webpage, you can find a brief history and a vision statement written by Hayden in the early days of Uniswap. In the article, Hayden expressed his original intention for creating Uniswap: to bring Web3 to everyone.

You have to admit, Uniswap achieved that. At the same time, it has also provided numerous Web3 entrepreneurs with a feasible compromise between economic returns and protocol development, namely the separation of teams and protocols.

In an interview with BlockBeats, an Amazon Web Services employee said, “Now the demand of Web3 clients (teams and projects) is very simple, just nodes and APIs. Ultimately, it’s because Web3 applications currently lack real demand on the consumer side. In comparison, the demands of CEX clients are much more complex.”

In fact, in a Web3 world where all interactions rely on Web2 cloud providers, Uniswap’s approach can provide valuable insights for Web3 entrepreneurs.

In the future development process of Web3, entrepreneurs actually don’t need to emphasize the “decentralized” label anymore, but rather focus on protocol innovation and open usability. By creating open protocols with practical consumer application scenarios and generating revenue through consumer demand and frontend API fees, sustainable development can be achieved. Backend contract calls can still be permissionless, like Tornado Cash, which may be the true future of the Web3 world.

Of course, the most awkward part is the UNI token, as well as the tokens of all future projects adopting this approach. UNI itself is a product that emerged under the pressure of Sushi Swap’s vampire attack. After the further separation of Uniswap Labs and the protocol, the role of UNI becomes even more awkward. If it plays the role of team equity, UNI is affiliated with the Uniswap protocol, not Labs; the two are different entities. At the protocol level, VC giants are also unlikely to empower UNI aggressively due to regulatory factors.

Ultimately, users are still paying for belief. However, there is also a saying: assets without empowerment are the most imaginative assets.

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