Why Did a16z Vote Against Uniswap's Latest Expansion?

While the vote on the proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 to BNB Chain is in full swing, a16z's vote against the proposal has attracted a lot of attention from the crypto community.

Last December, the 0xPlasma Labs founder released a draft proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 to BNB Chain. The proposal stated that since Uniswap's BUSL license expires in April of this year, it would be beneficial to deploy it as soon as possible to dominate the market.

After the proposal was initially approved, the community then released a Temperature Check about cross-chain bridge preferences in order to enable cross-chain governance and messaging between Ethereum and BNB Chain. The proposal included Wormhole, LayerZero, Celer, deBridge. On January 31, Wormhole received majority support and became the preferred cross-chain bridge provider for the proposed deployment of Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain.

It is worth noting that a16z had co-led a $135 million Series A+ round of funding for LayerZero with FTX Ventures and Sequoia Capital in March last year. However, a16z was unable to vote in this Temperature Check as they authorized Fireblocks to host their $UNI and were unable to vote on the off-chain proposal. Previously, a16z partner Eddy Lazzarin had stated at the Governance Forum that a16z would use its 15 million $UNI to vote for LayerZero if it was technically possible.

On February 5, the proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 to BNB Chain went to a final vote. Subsequently, a16z, which has the largest voting power, was not satisfied with the result and voted 15 million $UNI against the proposal, the first time in its history that a16z has voted against a Uniswap proposal.

With the heat of the event rising, Binance CEO CZ tweeted, "Uniswap controlled by a16z?" In addition he said that people's vote is completely different from money vote, and that an on-chain vote means that the giant whales could control the blockchain, just like shareholders do.

Furthermore, an analyst recently pointed out that a16z currently controls about 41.5 million $UNI and has a large number of votes. Eddy Lazzarin responded to this by saying, "a16z has previously delegated voting rights for 40 million tokens to outside groups (with no conditions on how they vote). We only voted with 15 million tokens (less than half what we have delegated to others)."

As of now, the proposal boasts 71.3% for and 28.69% against. Voting on the proposal will end on Feb. 10.