作者：Frank Chaparro、Michael McSweeney，The Block
Compiled by: TechFlow
In the community governance vote between January 27 and January 31, Wormhole won the vote and became the cross-chain bridge between Uniswap and BNB Chain. A total of 8,000 addresses participated in the vote, involving 45 million UNI governance tokens. Wormhole received 62% support, and LayerZero ranked second with 37% support. Wormhole will eventually be used to provide Uniswap v3 users on BNB Chain with the ability to participate in the Uniswap DAO Ethereum-based governance process.
Summary:
The fight between behind-the-scenes investors could affect the cross-chain bridge used in Uniswap’s next moves.
As of now, Wormhole appears to be an option, but this is not final.
The community held a “heat check” vote to see which cross-chain bridge would be used for the third iteration of decentralized exchange Uniswap, with the majority voting in favor of Wormhole.
But there is a problem.
Today’s selection is not technically final. The formal vote to approve Wormhole as a cross-chain bridge between the Ethereum and BNB chains has yet to come.
But a behind-the-scenes fight among cryptocurrency investors threatens to push the outcome in a different direction — with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, according to three sources.
The fight involves venture capital firms a16z and Jump, which back LayerZero and Wormhole, respectively. A source with knowledge of the process said a16z, which owns 15 million voting tokens, was unable to participate in the heat check due to the escrow setup of its tokens.
Eddy Lazzarin, an investment partner at a16z, appeared to confirm the issues in a forum post, saying the firm was unable to participate in heat checks.
“To be completely clear, we at a16z will use these 15 million voting tokens to vote for LayerZero in future snapshot votes if we are technically able to do so,” Lazzarin wrote. “So for ‘heat check’ purposes, please count us as such.”
Another source said the Uniswap Foundation has not indicated whether it will fulfill its written commitment to LayerZero. According to official statistics today, Wormhole won the vote by about 11 million votes.
Wormhole backers hope a16z’s vote will align with the heat vote, with one person close to the project saying, “I would be shocked if a16z went against the community vote and tried to block it, that would be truly abominable.”
A spokesperson for a16z confirmed that the company plans to participate in any on-chain votes. Jump did not comment on this report at press time.
The debate between the two cross-chain bridges is partly about the security differences between Wormhole, LayerZero or other competitors. Cross-chain bridges have been the target of numerous attacks, including a $325 million attack on Wormhole last February.
Late Monday, supporters of both LayerZero and Wormhole tried to pressure representatives of the Uniswap token to vote in their favor, a representative said.
Beyond security concerns, there’s also a financial aspect — specifically, once the integration goes live, the winning cross-chain bridge could potentially receive a large chunk of the staked assets. As a result, investors associated with the chosen protocol could potentially receive a sizable windfall.
When reached for comment, LayerZero pointed to Lazzarin’s forum post and said, “We believe the goal of heat checks is to vote on the will of governance.”
“Given these facts, we believe LayerZero is the preferred bridge in the heat check, but we believe the Uniswap Foundation should add both options to the final on-chain vote as this is how governance issues should be decided and have always been decided by Uniswap,” the startup said.