Today I’m excited for the @UniswapFND to propose the creation of DUNI – a DUNA legal entity to wrap & support Uniswap Governance. But before you dive into details, I want to take a step back and recognize why DAOs matter and why giving them legal certainty is important.

One of the most important qualities of decentralized protocols is their credible neutrality: a protocol may earn the trust of the largest possible set of people due to its transparency and immutability – the rules cannot be rewritten on them.

When immutability is not (or not yet) possible, for instance for treasury disbursements, there are DAOs – sets of aligned stakeholders which undergo an onchain voting process to make these changes transparently, when necessary.

Yet DAOs have long-faced vicious headwinds, operating in a legal gray area amid significant regulatory hostility. This environment introduced disproportionate risks to participants, discouraging full participation and limiting the kinds of proposals which could be considered.

We hope that the creation of DUNI, upon a successful governance vote, will mark another major milestone in a year of US regulation and legal infrastructure catching up to the value of decentralized protocols.

Uniswap Governance will be one of the first and certainly the largest DAO to take this step, providing more legal certainty for its participants.

The DUNA structure is a legal entity specifically crafted for DAOs: offering many of the benefits of legal status certainty while preserving their defining characteristics – permissionlessness, anonymity, and a respect for the onchain governance process.

We see it as an opportunity to create clarity and further empower Uniswap decentralized governance – opening up participation to more tokenholders, and the ability to consider meaningful proposals in the future (yes, this includes the fee switch).

We hope this proposal paves the way for other Foundations and DAOs looking to restructure or move onshore. We have always been proud to operate in the US, despite previous regulatory hostility.

We're excited to move through the governance process in the coming weeks, and in the future, to support others as they might do the same.