key takeaways
- Uniswap wants to implement on BNB Chain.
- However, two crypto companies disagree on which cross-chain bridge the protocol should use.
- Jump and a16z are leveraging the bridging solutions they have invested in: Wormhole and LayerZero, respectively.
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A Uniswap proposal to implement the protocol on the BNB Chain by using Wormhole is being contested by crypto firm a16z, which wants the decentralized exchange to use LayerZero instead.
Jump vs. Andreessen Horowitz
Two crypto companies are fighting over Uniswap.
The Uniswap community is currently voting about whether to implement decentralized exchange on the BNB chain, and whether the protocol should use Wormhole or the LayerZero cross-chain bridging solution to do so.
The proposal has come under scrutiny in the crypto community as it pits two prominent crypto firms, a16z and Jump, against each other. Jump is one of Wormhole’s main backers, while a16z invests in LayerZero.
In the initial “temperature check” vote, the Uniswap community voted overwhelmingly in favor of using Wormhole as a bridge (80.28% “yes” votes vs. 19.72% “no” votes). However, a16z partner Eddie Lazzarin indicated that the company had been unable to commit its 15 million UNI tokens against the proposal due to technical reasons regarding its escrow setup. Due to their massive holdings, the VC share may have changed the voting.
However, the stash of a16z may not be enough to prevent the final proposal from being approved. At the time of writing, a total of 39.63 million votes had been cast, with over 61.67% in favor of implementing Uniswap on the BNB Chain using Wormhole and 38.32% against. While a16z is the largest UNI holder to pledge its tokens to vote thus far, it has only garnered an additional 190,000 votes, bringing the total votes against the proposal to approximately 15,190,000. Meanwhile, the Wormhole backers have garnered over 24,440,000 votes thanks to UNI whales like Robert Leshner, GFX Labs and Argent.
However, it is worth noting that only 3.9% of all UNI tokens have committed to voting so far: the process is therefore far from a done deal and could yet swing in either direction. Voting ends on February 10.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned BTC, ETH, and various other crypto assets.
