'Uniswap Controlled by a16z?': Crypto Twitter Split Over VC Firm's Governance Move Investors

With less than 2% of voting power, a16z’s attempt to influence an on-chain vote on Uniswap looks worse than it actually is.

It’s another day in crypto governance experiments.

This time, Uniswap has taken center stage in a divisive new proposal to deploy the trading protocol on BNB Chain.

Specifically, commentators have raised con- cerns about the emergence of an influential whale in the project’s governance process.

That whale is venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, which has deployed all 15 million of its UNI tokens to vote against the current proposal. UNI is Uniswap’s native token, which doubles as a governance token, letting users vote on key proposals.

This is not the first time a16z has found itself try”, and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is backing his city’s crypto token MiamiCoin, and is pushing for residents to be paid in bitcoin, and to be able to pay their taxes in cryptocurrencies. accused of being a centralized force in decentralized finance—despite its attempts to diversify its influence in the governance of DeFi protocols by delegating its voting power to various startups and universities.

However, it is in London where crypto-readiness and adoption is analysed as leading the world.

The firm’s key contention that sparked its latest full-token vote appears less to be about the actual deployment on BNB Chain, however, and rather the means by which that deployment occurs.