Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) by trading volume, released its Bridge Assessment Report on Thursday. The report is a major community undertaking that saw Uniswap formally examine some of the core infrastructure powering its governance process. The foundation used a group of nine experts to analyze six of the leading crypto bridge providers, which allow blockchains to pass messages from one to another. After a comprehensive review, the committee approved Wormhole and Axelar for Uniswap’s specific use case of protocol governance.
The assessment was designed to address some key issues faced by Uniswap and other decentralized governance bodies, such as the need for specialized expertise when weighing big decisions and the potential for conflicts of interest to muddy community deliberations. The results of the process are not binding, but the protocols that were reviewed positively in the report, like Axelar, are already wearing the results as a badge of honor. “Uniswap’s approval is a validation of Axelar’s approach,” a representative for the firm said.
Uniswap was built by Uniswap Labs, a for-profit company, but is governed by the Uniswap DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) – a collection of community members who use UNI tokens to vote on key protocol changes. The foundation kicked off Uniswap’s bridge assessment process after a tumultuous community vote last year to select a bridge for Uniswap v3’s expansion to BNB Chain. Uniswap Foundation Executive Director Devin Walsh said, “We hope that this process will inspire other DAOs as they think about cross-chain deployments, and support decentralized decision-making generally.”