10.25 Daily Preview, today let’s talk about UNI. As one of the typical projects in the industry that is well-received (good word-of-mouth data) but not popular (not popular in the market), it has rarely become a controversial subject due to some outrageous operations by its project owner this year.
I first came into contact with Uniswap before the summer of DeFi in 2020. At that time, AAVE in the lending sector was not very popular, and LINK only promoted the market without building a community, so people did not dare to chase the rise. Therefore, Uniswap, the leader of DEX in the DeFi troika, became the project that is most likely to excite old players and most likely to be understood by newcomers. For old players, the dream of decentralized exchanges runs through 2017-2019. Before the AMM was rolled out, DEX was always trapped by various technical or product problems. Not to mention for new users, it is better to knock them out with a stick than to let them use those old antiques.
Uniswap's data in the early stage of the bear market was very impressive, and the project team also received a huge amount of financing. During that period, the discussion in the circle was that it must issue a token, but occasionally it would be sublimated to talk about a long-controversial issue in the industry, that is, if a project achieves results, does it mean that it must issue a coin?
I believe that the Uniswap project team also struggled with this answer for a long time. Their initial idea was probably the same as that of Opensea now, that is, to continue the business and raise funds, and to never issue tokens, with the goal of going public. However, the project team did not have much time to hesitate. After entering the summer of Defi, the second-largest DEX Sushi (Sushiswap) took the lead and directly issued Sushi, which quickly washed a large amount of funds and users from Uniswap in a short period of time. Then the Uni project team really lost their composure because of this, and finally hurriedly followed the trend and issued UNI without planning anything and without considering the key empowerment clearly. Although it was an airdrop feast for users at the time (400 UNI with almost zero threshold), and it was quickly listed on Binance and Coinbase, and the subsequent bull market performance was not bad. But looking back now, the move at the time was indeed too hasty.
In the bull market, everyone is crazy. UNI's biggest empowerment problem was also covered up by the dozens of times increase. Although Uniswap's products have been continuously iterated in the following two or three years, it has never given UNI a story. So this hen that lays golden eggs but is very stupid has always maintained a very fruitful business profit but never does anything. It doesn't even bother to make a fuss about users.
In comparison, Ethereum is much more sensible. Every upgrade takes into account the empowerment, chip structure, inflation and deflation of ETH. Whether it is a hard fork, the promotion of ETH2.0, or other Shanghai upgrades or support for L2, the focus of the pie is always on ETH itself. This is one of the reasons why the community is always confident in the future of ETH in any environment. Who knows whether the Ethereum project itself is awesome or not? If what you do makes ETH awesome, then we like it. In comparison, the Uniswap project has clearly issued coins, but it has taken the scumbag route of Opensea, who doesn't care about anything. It's really a double-edged sword. It's completely understandable that the community's resentment is gradually increasing.
As for this circle, those who have been in it for a long time understand that confidence is the foundation and everything. Only by giving users enough sense of security can they win the world. The UNI project team obviously has sufficient funds and is considered a smart old-fashioned old hen in the circle. If they still don’t get wise in the next cycle and continue to be arrogant and self-righteous, then they will be abandoned by the times and become the remnants crushed by the new generation.
