Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher
The Uniswap Foundation (UF) has recently sparked heated discussions in the DeFi community due to excessively high executive compensation. According to @ImperiumPaper, which provided a detailed comparison of the financial data between UF and the Optimism Grants Council, it indicates that UF's fund utilization efficiency is low.
This controversy has not only led UNI holders to question the value provided by the foundation but has also prompted a response from Pepo, a major contributor to the Uniswap DAO, who previously left due to dissatisfaction with UF's governance.
The Compensation Cost of Three Executives at the Uniswap Foundation Equals the Entire Optimism Team
According to the Uniswap Foundation's 2024 financial report, the foundation disbursed approximately $9.99 million in grants, but the total employee compensation reached as high as $4.79 million, with senior executive compensation accounting for $3.87 million. Adding other expenses of about $2.8 million, UF's total expenditure is approximately $12.8 million. This means employee compensation makes up nearly 37.5% of total expenditures, while executive compensation alone accounts for 22%.
In contrast, the Optimism Grants Council had a total grant budget of about $63.5 million during the same period, with internal personnel compensation of only about $2.14 million. If we conservatively add an estimated KYC cost of $500,000, the total comes to $2.6 million.
ImperiumPaper emphasized, "The cost of UF's three executives is equivalent to the entire Optimism team, yet UF only disbursed 20% of the funds that Optimism did." They called on UNI holders to demand an explanation from the UF board regarding the value it provides. Supporters argue that hiring senior executives in a Web2 company of this scale will naturally incur higher costs, while opponents contend that foundation compensation should not be compared to the private sector, especially when individuals with mediocre qualifications are receiving premium salaries, akin to many boondoggles in the crypto industry.
Looking back, UNI has experienced significant price fluctuations over the past two years. After closing at around $7.35 at the end of 2023, it surged to over $18 in December 2024, only to fall below $10 in February 2025 due to a broad correction in the crypto market, continuing to decline through mid-year.
Recently, benefiting from the Unification governance proposal, UNI saw a single-day surge of about 19% on December 20. Amidst a lackluster fluctuation in mainstream coins, it quickly climbed from a consolidation range of $5.50 to $6.27, before falling back to $5.76 before the deadline for this article.
Meanwhile, Uniswap's TVL has dropped 60% from its peak of nearly $10 billion in 2021-2022 to about $4 billion, indicating that while both token prices and protocol locked amounts have shrunk by more than half, executive compensation expenditures account for nearly a quarter of total expenditures, raising community concerns about whether employee salaries genuinely contribute to protocol growth. As of now, UF has not formally responded to the latest criticisms.
Additionally, Pepo (@0xPEPO), a former Uniswap DAO contributor who left this year due to dissatisfaction with UF governance, also shared the controversial post, expressing hope that his friends can break free from "salary hell," indirectly mocking a certain executive's annual salary of $700,000.
Uniswap Operates on a Complex Byzantine Structure
Pepo resigned from his position as a DAO representative in May this year, holding 455,000 UNI tokens at the time, making him one of the top 20 DAO representatives. According to CoinDesk, Pepo's departure stemmed from dissatisfaction with UF, accusing it of prioritizing its own interests and Uniswap Labs over the DAO as a whole after receiving $165 million in funding, and lacking responsiveness and transparency in feedback.
At that time, Pepo stated in a post on X, "The foundation's actions seem to prioritize isolating others rather than collaborating, and this is harming Uniswap." This reflects deep-seated issues in Uniswap governance, including private decision-making by large representatives, insufficient influence of DAO members, and questions about the protocol's level of decentralization.
Pepo's departure is seen as a symbol of reduced DAO participation, with PaperImperium from GFX Labs stating, "For any DAO, when a contributor feels that the only way to make an impact is to resign, it is a loss."
Like most DeFi protocols, Uniswap operates on a highly complex "Byzantine" structure: a for-profit company, Uniswap Labs, is responsible for technical development, while the non-profit organization, the Uniswap Foundation (UF), promotes ecosystem growth, and governance and resource allocation are managed by a DAO composed of UNI holders.
It is precisely because of this multi-party governance structure that conflicts of interest are seeded. In March of this year, the DAO authorized the disbursement of $165 million to the foundation, intending to grant it the autonomy to drive development, but it inadvertently led to blurred lines of responsibility and authority.
As Pepo and other contributors have expressed concerns, when the foundation's actions are questioned as prioritizing its own interests over the overall interests of the DAO, balancing the interests of token holders with other stakeholders has become a core issue that Uniswap, and indeed all DeFi protocols, must confront.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
