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The Uniswap tragedy of fucking up a perfect legacy
Each Uniswap protocol is a masterpiece of its time, but Uniswap Labs chose to operate in the most hostile jurisdiction and rely on a centralized infrastructure to run its frontend, which geo-blocks users by IP addresses and employs blockchain surveillance services like BlockAid that operate on a presumption of guilt.
Uniswap also uses restrictive Business Source License that legitimizes the bullshit system, which is based on coercion, censorship, law enforcement, absurd concepts like "intellectual property", and it gives more power to the state to decide what information can be shared. Besides, Uniswap enforces anti-free speech laws across the world on behalf of one nation state government.
In 2020, Uniswap Labs panicked during the SushiSwap vampire attack and printed an unnecessary, inflationary governance token to keep liquidity from fleeing. Predictably, UNI lost 90% from its all-time high during a 2021 altcoin season pump. Only now, five years later, UNI is trying to fix its tokenomics with a burn mechanism to appease bagholders.
To its credit, Uniswap fixed a few issues shortly after the original podcast episode made waves across the crypto space. For example, Uniswap unbanned DPI and many other tokens and removed the "impersonator" flag from the SPASM token.
To learn more about the grim state of web3 and how VC-backed compliant companies are leeching on the Ethereum ecosystem, you can listen to the full episode of Dark Vegas Tales #1: Ethereum runs on slave tech.
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