Uniswap fee switch proposal is killing the decentralized DAO model. Uniswap foundation activities move to Uniswap Labs, meaning... ...decision power moves from a non-profit organization governed by $UNI holders to a Delaware centralized corporation. - Most Foundation employees move to Uniswap Labs - The Foundation only keeps a tiny grants team - After the remaining ~$100M grants are deployed, the Foundation shuts down Thus $UNI token is no longer a DAO token but a token purely valued by buybacks/fees Uniswap will be able to generate. It's not a criticism but admitting the facts that: - The DAO model was indeed just pretending decentralization due to regulatory struggles - DAOs are inefficient at governing and allocating resources ---- Uniswap isn't the first to do it either: - Scroll fully shuts down the DAO and moved to centralized governance - Arbitrum's "Vision for the Future" moves many decisions to the core group of Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain Labs to 'fix inefficiencies' - Optimism Season 8 centralizes power by moving real decisions to curated stakeholder groups and councils while tokenholders only keep veto rights - Lido’s BORG model centralizes execution into legal foundations run by appointed directors while the DAO only sets high level direction ----- The famous a16z "Progressive Decentralization" model of finding PMF and exiting to the community for sufficient decentralization is dying. Or it was just simply pretending in the first place.