In a move aimed at advancing their vision of creating a self-sovereign Internet with a permissionless alternative to traditional finance (TradFi), the Uniswap Foundation (UF) has submitted a proposal to secure the second tranche of funding. 

The desired funding, totaling $62.37 million, will be put to an on-chain vote scheduled for Wednesday, October 4th, with a 10% buffer included to mitigate price volatility.

Uniswap Foundation Seeks Community Approval

The separation of the funding request into two tranches was initially established to allow the UF to finalize its legal entity and obtain non-profit status from the Internal US Revenue Service (IRS), as the company is based in Brooklyn New York, ensuring clarity on tax implications before receiving the larger portion of funds. The UF obtained this status in the spring of this year, prompting the request for the second tranche.

The first tranche of funding, approved by Uniswap governance last year, aimed for $20 million but experienced a decrease in value due to a drop in the price of UNI, the native token of the Uniswap Protocol. 

Consequently, the Uniswap Foundation received $17.3 million worth of UNI, creating a remainder of $56.7 million to be requested in the second tranche. A 10% buffer of $5.67 million has been included to account for potential price fluctuations, bringing the total request to $62.37 million.

The Uniswap Foundation plans to receive the funds in UNI, with the amount determined using a 30-day UNI/USD TWAP (Time-Weighted Average Price). The pricing and its source will be explicitly noted in the on-chain proposal to ensure transparency in the process.

Regarding future operations, Uniswap currently holds 452,534 UNI tokens for employee vesting, valued at around $1.9 million. Factoring in a capital loss of $259,000 and the current UNI price, the UF has approximately $9.24 million remaining for operational expenses, expected to sustain them until Q4 2024. 

Lastly, according to the proposal discussion, the Uniswap Foundation anticipates revisiting governance in mid-2024 to extend its operational runway.

UNI Consolidates Amid Bearish Market Sentiment

Uniswap’s native token, UNI, has been consolidated between the price range of $4.198 and $4.311 over the past week. 

This price stagnation comes from the overall market trend and a bearish macro outlook, with the token experiencing a 0.5% decline in the fourteen-day timeframe. Furthermore, UNI has dropped 9.6% over the past 30 days, reaching a four-month low.

In the short term, UNI bulls must defend the current price floor to establish a strong support level. They aim to surpass the resistance walls at $4.418 and $4.487 to break the downtrend structure and potentially rally toward $6.259. It is worth noting that this price level is still below UNI’s annual high of $7.629.

According to Token Terminal data, Uniswap’s circulating market cap currently stands at $3.67 billion, experiencing a recent decrease of 6.66%. The fully diluted market cap, which considers the total number of UNI tokens that could enter circulation, stands at $4.27 billion, displaying an 8.15% decrease.

The total value locked (TVL) in Uniswap, representing the amount of cryptocurrency assets deposited and utilized within the platform, has recently declined by 5.31%. This decline reflects the broader Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector’s challenges.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com 

• The company behind Cardano has revealed plans to bring assurance to decentralized applications. 
• Cardano’s plan could benefit smart contract developers and end-users by introducing certification levels.
• Cardano’s security checks will ensure that user funds and project reputation is protected from exploits. 

Input Output Hong Kong, the software firm that developed Cardano, is developing certification levels to assess the quality of decentralized applications. Cardano’s goal is to secure smart contracts in its ecosystem. 

Cardano rolls out future plans for dApps in its network

Cardano network is keen on providing high assurance to investors working with smart contracts. Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) is keen on receiving source codes of high quality from secure smart contracts that utilize good properties. 

The certification by Cardano would ensure that security checks are performed before deployments. Further to avert the threat of an attack, smart contracts would be continually audited and updated. 

The steps taken by Cardano could provide benefits to both smart contract developers and end-users. This helps protect investor funds and project reputations from attacks and exploits. 

Cardano laid out its future plans in the September 2021 summit. Cardano’s certification program would provide levels of quality for decentralized applications and internal smart contacts. 

The firm is working with Runtime Verification, Tweag, Well Typed, Certik, and others. The new Cardano light wallet will be launched with the firm’s certification program. 

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, noted that in 2021 over “two million assets” were issued in the ecosystem. Over 127 projects are currently under development, and nearly 30 of these projects will be launched within the next 90 days. 

Hoskinson said, 

Next year, what’s going to happen is that a formal open-source project structure is going to be formed, kind of like Hyperledger to Linux. We’re going to see many institutions wired in, and all the people that are currently working on it will be novated over, including me.

Heading into a new trading week, here is a quick roundup of the top five stories from the technology, corporate and cryptocurrency sectors that investors would not want to miss out on from the weekend.

1. Twitter Revamps Under New CEO: Twitter Inc.’s (NASDAQ:TWTR) new CEO Parag Agrawal has reorganized the company’s management team in his first week at the company’s helm. Twitter, which is shifting to a General Manager model, said in a regulatory filing that engineering lead Michael Montano as well as design and research lead Dantley Davis will step down from their positions at the end of the year.

2. Randi Zuckerberg Says Shiba Inu Has Become Mainstream: Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has said that Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), the self-described “Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE)-killer,” has gone mainstream. In a video published on her official YouTube channel, Randi also added that she believes both Shiba Inu and Dogecoin have an opportunity to grow despite their rivalry.

3. Alibaba Reorganizes Amid Headwinds: Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) has replaced its long-standing CFO and announced a reorganization of its e-commerce business into two new units. The Jack Ma-founded company, which was the first among major Chinese tech companies to feel the pinch from a regulatory crackdown by Beijing last year, said its deputy chief financial officer Toby Xu will succeed Maggie Wu as CFO from April next year.

4. Bitcoin, Altcoins Trade Weak After “Bloody Saturday”: Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and other major cryptocurrencies continued to trade weak on Sunday evening after a “bloody Saturday” sell-off due to fear surrounding a hike in interest rates and the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus. Bitcoin was down 2.3% during the last 24 hours, trading at $48,303.99 at press time early Monday.

5. Elon Musk’s Wealth Drops $15B Amid Market Sell-Off: The net worth of Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk — the world’s richest person — fell by $15.2 billion on Friday as shares of Tesla and other tech companies tumbled amid a broader market selloff following a discouraging November jobs report coupled with concerns surrounding the coronavirus omicron variant.

What Else: Among other stories from the weekend, investors would want to check out the EV week in review, the ten weirdest Beatles covers of all time,  how Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) continued to dominate the U.S. box office, and news that Cathie-Wood led Ark Invest sold more shares in Tesla while loading up on shares in DocuSign Inc. (NASDAQ:DOCU) on Friday.

Meanwhile, CNN, a division of AT&T Inc.’s (NYSE:T) WarnerMedia, has fired Chris Cuomo following the revelations of how the primetime anchor helped his brother and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo respond to sexual harassment accusations.

Amid a global crypto crackdown, World’s largest Exchange, Binance has finally given up fighting and is now approaching authorities to re-establish itself as a Centralized business. After suffering the regulators’ wrath from different corners of the world, the exchange is now in conversation with multiple regulators, in lieu of acquiring their approvals. Furthermore, Binance will also start distancing itself from the expanding global crypto crackdown on unregistered platforms, according to the exchange’s CEO, Zhao Changpeng.

“As we run a centralized exchange, we have come to realize that we need to have a centralized entity to work well with regulators…We need to have clear records of stakeholders’ ownership, transparency, and risk controls.” Zhao told the South China Morning Post.

Binance has confirmed that to build a centralized headquartered financial institution, it will be giving up the essence of the blockchain, i.e., the decentralized method of operations. The exchange highlights, now that the cryptocurrencies’ market cap has reached $2 trillion, it is almost impossible to function without regulatory interference. Henceforth, they have also started preparing for the inevitable regulatory shift in the crypto industry.

“As the largest player in the industry, we need to prepare ourselves for the shift. We are making changes to make it easier to work with regulators,” said Zhao.

Binance Finally Gives In After consecutive regulatory actions

Binance’s regulatory remission has become evident as the exchange has failed to come up with any latest exciting launches or upgrades. This undisputed stagnancy in the world’s largest exchange offerings is the result of the long-term and expanding regulatory crackdown on Binance.

After suffering isolated and consistent attacks from multiple regulatory authorities globally, Binance is now taking steps toward compliance. Binance has been banned or warned by regulatory authorities of countries like the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Cayman Islands, South Africa, and many more.

“Binance welcomes developments to our industry’s regulatory framework as they pose opportunities for the market players to have greater collaboration with the regulators. We are committed to working constructively in policy-making that seeks to benefit every user.”, stated Binance upon its latest withdrawal from Product Offering in Singapore.