Key points to remember
- Uniswap wants to deploy on BNB Chain.
- However, two crypto companies disagree on which cross-chain bridge the protocol should use.
- Jump and a16z are both pushing for bridge solutions they’ve invested in – Wormhole and LayerZero, respectively.
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A proposal by Uniswap to deploy the protocol on BNB Chain using Wormhole is opposed by crypto firm a16z, which wants the decentralized exchange to use LayerZero instead.
Jump against Andreessen Horowitz
Two crypto companies are fighting over Uniswap.
The Uniswap Community currently voting on whether to deploy the decentralized exchange on the BNB chain and whether the protocol should use Wormhole or the cross-chain bridge solution LayerZero to do so.
The proposal has come under intense scrutiny in the crypto community as it pits two leading crypto companies – a16z and Jump – against each other. Jump is a major backer of Wormhole, while a16z is invested in LayerZero.
The initial “temperature control” vote saw the Uniswap community vote overwhelmingly in favor of using Wormhole as a bridge (80.28% “yes” votes vs. 19.72% “no” votes). However, a16z partner Eddie Lazzarin noted that the company had been unable to pledge its 15 million UNI tokens against the proposal for technical reasons related to its custody setup. Due to its massive turnouts, VC’s participation may have swung the vote.
However, a16z’s reserve may not be sufficient to prevent the final proposal from passing. At the time of writing, a total of 39.63 million votes have been cast, with over 61.67% in favor of rolling out Uniswap on BNB Chain using Wormhole and 38.32% against. While a16z is the largest UNI holder to commit its tokens to vote so far, it only courted an additional 190,000 votes, bringing the total votes against the proposal to around 15,190,000. Meanwhile, Wormhole supporters have garnered over 24,440,000 votes thanks to UNI whales such as Robert Leshner, GFX Labs and Argent.
However, it should be noted that only 3.9% of all UNI tokens have committed to voting so far, so the process is far from over and could still swing back and forth. Voting ends February 10.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this article, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.
