Uniswap's first governance vote fails ... despite 98% support

Uniswap's first governance proposal has ended in defeat, with votes in favor falling a whisker short of the required threshold.

The first governance vote for decentralized exchange Uniswap has ended in failure, despite the proposal attracting overwhelming support of 98% of votes cast.

Despite this, it fell roughly 1% short of the 40 million votes threshold needed for approval by the close of voting.

DeFi blogger Danger Zhang described the vote as "The DeFi equivalent of winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college."

Ironically, the proposal sought to reduce the number of tokens needed to submit and pass proposals.

Currently, proposals can only be made by entities holding at least 1% of UNI's circulating supply, and need to surpass 40 million total votes to pass.

Dharma's recommendations would lower the thresholds so holders of at least 3 million UNI could suggest upgrades, and only require 30 million supporting votes for a proposal to pass.

Responding to the vote's conclusion, Dharma CEO and co-founder Nadav Hollander described the result as "a disappointing outcome that demonstrates the impetus for the proposal in the first place."

Dharma currently controls 15 million UNI in a single address.

It's impossible to know how many of the abstained votes wanted to vote no, with a quorum of >50% abstaining means voting no, and many voters knew that.