Although the content of this "charge" announcement by Uniswap founder Hayden is brief, it can decipher a lot of "value" information:
1) Uniswap’s “charging” is not to make money, but to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Uniswap maintains front-end Apps and develops mobile Apps. This is a quasi-centralized operation idea. There is bound to be a lot of operation and maintenance service costs. In particular, the expansion and promotion of Uniswap Wallet is almost completely centralized operations, including development and operation, channel operations, and supervision. Compliance, security risk maintenance, etc. are all directly increased costs. Implementing additional charges can effectively subsidize operation and maintenance costs and support Uniswap's faster expansion of product matrix deployment. If it is just a matter of making money, it seems more effective for Uniswap to try the back-end protocol and change the code logic. Will making money come faster?
2) The Uniswap protocol and Uniswap labs are two different things.
Uniswap is trying to tell the majority of Uni community users through this highly controversial unilateral "notice" that only the Uniswap protocol is decentralized. Both web and mobile terminals are owned by Uniswap. The additional charges are probably just a "centralization" measure. At the beginning, it will be inevitable to implement KYC supervision strategies in these channels, because no company can develop without compliance issues. There is no vote on the 0.15 fee rate, it is directly announced, which has already explained the problem. The vote is only for changes in the Uniswap protocol itself. efficient.
3) Uniswap’s future product matrix will compete with MetaMask.
As you can see, MetaMask, which has not issued coins, is very happy to explore the commercialization of products such as institutional MetaMask, MetaMask Snap, and portfolio dashboard. Occasionally hint at the issuance of tokens, and the handling fees will be earned again. This web2+web3 Pua business model of making money while lying down is really the envy of Uniswap. The launch of Uniswap’s protocol and product segmentation strategy is obviously to pave the way for the commercial expansion of the subsequent product matrix and strategically cover a larger and broader ecological niche.
4) Uniswap’s governance token may be isolated indefinitely.
Uniswap made such a major decision. Although Uni holders protested and were puzzled, the official seemed to be completely uncaring. The expected value empowerment of Uni tokens has been delayed, and the voting governance rights have also been stripped away. Even if voting is useful, how can the weight of the community's vote exceed that of the "official" one. Alas, in a word, the tragedy of currency holders.
5) If users do not want to accept the 0.15% rate, they can choose to call the API interface of a third-party wallet, or call other DeFi Aggregators, provided that these interface services directly use the Uniswap back-end protocol. However, Uniswap does not necessarily worry about user loss. It seems to be good for Aggregators on the market, but it is difficult to say that all Aggregators directly call the back-end protocol. Regarding potential user losses and 0.15% fee income, Uniswap officials must have calculated an economic account and done a trade-off.
What's more, if nothing else, there will be some well-designed "phishing" front-ends that claim to be able to bypass the 0.15 rate to carry out a wave of fraud. The market will eventually tell everyone that spending 0.15% more to choose Uniswap official, which is safer and more reliable, may be the best choice.