Uniswap proposal under fire for enabling Dharma to 'take over governance'

Decentralized exchange Uniswap is currently undergoing its first governance vote, which was submitted by open-source lending protocol Dharma.

A number of community members have raised concerns that if successful, the proposal will hand Dharma too much control over the future direction of Uniswap.

This potentially gives the top holders - of which Dharma is one - significant power over decisions regarding Uniswap.

Currently, Uniswap governance requires proposal submitters to hold 1% of the total delegated UNI supply, with a quorum of 4% required to pass a proposal.

A recent blog post written by community member David Felton - better known as Hiturunk in the Uniswap Discord channel - delves into why the proposal could be bad for decentralization.

DeFi Watch founder Chris Blec claims to have been blocked by Dharma after questioning the motives behind the proposal.

Because I've been critical of their plans to partner w/ Visa and take over Uniswap governance with the goal of furthering their own business interests.

"A company like Dharma with clear business interests should not have this level of control over Uniswap decisions. This power should be delegated to USERS. Not corporations."

"We believe this proposal will help foster a vibrant Uniswap governance process," and said that it "Achieves the goal of making governance more accessible, while still ensuring that Uniswap governance is not subject to unilateral deleterious actors."

Uniswap has come under fire recently over centralization concerns when on-chain analytics provider Glassnode reported that centralized exchange Binance holds enough tokens to make a significant difference to the outcome of a proposal vote.