a16z’s 15 million UNI vote tested Uniswap governance

Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm known as a16z, disclosed on February 5, 2023 that it had voted 15 million UNI against Uniswap governance Proposal 31. The proposal sought permission to deploy Uniswap v3 on BNB Chain and use Wormhole to carry governance messages between Ethereum and the new deployment.

The vote did not decide the proposal on February 5. Voting remained open through February 10, and the measure still needed sufficient participation and support. Its immediate importance was different: a single institution had placed 15 million votes behind one side of a live decision, turning an expansion proposal into a public test of token-weighted governance, bridge security and investor influence.

The deployment depended on a bridge

Proposal 31 was submitted on February 2 by 0xPlasma Labs on behalf of the Uniswap community. It requested an additional-use grant under the Uniswap v3 license so the protocol’s contracts could be deployed on BNB Chain while remaining subject to Ethereum-based Uniswap governance.

That control arrangement made the bridge more than a route for moving tokens. Uniswap Foundation’s contemporaneous explanation said the owner of the v3 factory on another chain would be a bridge contract receiving instructions from Uniswap’s Ethereum timelock. Governance actions—including changing supported fee tiers—would therefore depend on cross-chain messaging.

An earlier Snapshot poll had selected Wormhole with approximately 28 million UNI votes, versus approximately 17 million for LayerZero. The final on-chain proposal incorporated Wormhole rather than reopening the bridge selection.

Why a16z voted no

In its February 5 forum statement, a16z gave two reasons for opposing Proposal 31. It argued that bridge providers had not received a sufficiently comprehensive and comparable assessment, and it said Wormhole was not the most secure or decentralized option. The firm cited Wormhole’s prior exploit and another reported vulnerability as reasons to restart the deployment process after a formal review.

Those were a16z’s stated claims, not an independent finding that Proposal 31 was unsafe. Other delegates reached the opposite conclusion. GFX Labs disclosed on February 5 that it had voted for the proposal, prioritizing expansion to BNB Chain and noting that governance could replace the selected bridge through a later proposal.

The disagreement also carried a potential conflict that readers could evaluate but that did not, by itself, establish misconduct. LayerZero Labs was an a16z portfolio company. The relevant governance question was therefore not merely which bridge had the best design; it was whether disclosed economic interests and concentrated voting power were being managed transparently enough for a protocol presenting itself as community governed.

What was knowable on February 5

Contemporaneous Cointelegraph reporting recorded 23.4 million votes, representing about 3% of UNI, at its February 5 publication snapshot. That was an interim reading, not a closing result. Uniswap’s published quorum requirement for the proposal was 40 million UNI votes, and voting was scheduled to end on February 10.

The 15 million-vote bloc was consequently large enough to shape the early tally and public debate, but it could neither establish the final result nor prove that a16z controlled Uniswap governance. Delegated UNI held or directed by other participants could vote independently, and additional votes could arrive before the deadline.

Later context

The canonical proposal record shows that Proposal 31 subsequently passed with 55,880,028 votes for and 28,466,755 against, reached quorum and was executed on February 22, 2023. Those outcomes are later context; they were not knowable when a16z explained its opposition on February 5.