People's Views on Uniswap Swap Fee - msfew

Background

On a limited set of token pairs, Uniswap Labs starts to charge a flat fee of 0.15% to sustainably fund Uniswap’s operations.

This is separate from the Uniswap Protocol fee switch, which is voted on by Uniswap governance (proposals, working groups, temperature checks, signal polls, temporary trial periods for thee).

Hayden said “users have countless choices of ways to use it, through aggregators, other UIs, or by interacting directly with the smart contracts. Imo our interface remains the best”.

There are many different perspectives on this event. I will start from different perspectives, collect other people's thoughts, and then express my own.

Opinion on Governance & Decentralization

At the governance level, much of the discussion centered on the fact that Uniswap has a set of governance tools in place to make changes to the protocol, and that this incident was unique in that it was a change to the front-end, and therefore did not go through the governance process.

$UNI is useless

@fishkiller pointed out the governance token is still kinda useless.
@tmel0211 summarized that Uniswap's Governance Token may be isolated indefinitely.
@twobitidiot said “The Uniswap proposal sucks, and benefits VCs and insiders over holders.”
@FreddieRaynolds said “they enabled the wrong fee switch. 0.15% to Uniswap labs equity owners not $UNI token holders.”
@spreekaway implied that UF will dump on $UNI holders when they get the fee.
@0xSisyphus thought that “all Uniswap would have to do is direct the tiny revenue stream to the token and everything would be fine” and we “can safely assume everyone working at uniswap has sold all of their tokens by now”

Not going through governance is fine

@DefiIgnas clarified that governance is for smart contracts (protocols), not everything under the Uniswap brand.
@devinawalsh from UF argued that UF is getting more decentralized with open-source and ecosystem.

Not going through governance is bad

@0xmillie_eth mocked that “this is not a proposal, it's a decree, taking effect right away”, and “haha the fee turns on tomorrow for me”.
@AntonioMJuliano from dYdX said “some of the OG major DeFi players (Uniswap, 0x) that started more decentralized are becoming relatively more centralized”.

Opinion on Fork & Frontend

Uniswap Interface will still be used

@cronokirby thought people will still use the Uniswap interface, and “just pay the fee cause they're sort of lazy”.
@Mudit__Gupta asked “Ser do you know how many people use fox wallet swap?”, and implies that Uniswap Interface will still be used just like the “expensive” Metamask Swap.
@0xdoug said the Uniswap Interface is high quality, reliable and worth the fee.

Forks will be different

@chainyoda said “you can just fork the front end and cut the fee in half” without forking the contract.
@hasufl was confused “why several Uniswap competitors claim to have no fees when they do”, and this shows the heated competition between “forks”.
@rsarrow said “you’re going to choose your front end the way you choose the charity you donate to”.
@0xmons proposed another form of fork “forked uni frontend with a fee except this time he fee goes to token holders“.

Opinion on Strategy

At first glance, it may seem like charging for Uniswap is going to make Uniswap's usage go down, but in essence, for Uniswap as a whole, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Continue to be dominant

@shier_nftscan thinks this make Uniswap enters the ideal scenario: Uniswap stays #1 in DEX, third-party apps cash in on traffic by accessing Uniswap on Consumer products, earn service fees.
@tmel0211 predicts that “Uniswap's launch of the protocol and product segmentation strategy is clearly intended to pave the way for the commercialization and expansion of the subsequent product matrix, strategically covering a larger and broader ecological niche”.

Different models brought by Uniswap

@0xTaker brought the fact that Uniswap Labs doesn’t own the liquidity, and fee from interface will come from branding and UX.
@keoneHD said this event showed “frontends are valuable and it's worth putting effort into better UX”.
@tmel0211 summarized that this act is about “Uniswap is trying to tell the Uni community that only the Uniswap protocol is decentralized, and that the web and mobile are owned by Uniswap.”
@jolestar brainstormed about a reference field reserved in the protocol and populated by the front-end. Finally, the protocol shares the profit with front-ends.
@0xkydo saw this as “a crucial step forward for DeFi … to establish an open financial system that operates in a permissionless and non-custodial way.”
@KamesGeraghty thought “payment will be for curation not for execution” after v4 Hooks makes complexity grow exponentially.
@smsunarto said that “represents a shift away from this monolith app/service + protocol companies”.

Trolls

My Predicts

Everyone's views have been very comprehensive . I'll summarize and make some predictions, which do not constitute investment advice:

Uniswap Interface will still be dominant with only tiny percentage of users left.
- What Happens After This Prediction: AAVE integrates ParaSwap directly.
Uniswap will grow faster with Uniswap v4, Uniswap X, and Uniswap Mobile.
- What Happens After This Prediction: Uniswap frontend is the 9th crypto company by revenue, above arbitrum, aave.
Forks will be released in greater numbers, but new forks don’t have chance (ipfs one already exists).
Fee switch proposal will be pushed out, but won’t pass.