Today in DeFi - FairLaunch Capital, Uniswap Token Lists, Sushi Swap
Fair Launch Capital
Fair Launch Capital just launched. This is a novel fund that aims to improve token distributions for projects, while providing the seed capital to get an audit and launch. In a “Fair Launch” project, users will get a larger portion of the tokens, on better terms. As they explain it:
Here’s how it works:
1. We identify the most promising projects that want to do a Fair Launch.
2. We make a no-strings-attached grant to cover the costs of audit and launch.
3. We never take any allocation of tokens before launch.
4. After launch, we initiate a governance vote to let the community decide to pay the grant forward to the next project that wants to do a Fair Launch.
Imo, fair launches are extremely important for DeFi - an industry that aims to disrupt existing capital structures. For me, this is an extremely exciting development.
Uniswap Token Lists
Uniswap is possibly the most decentralized Defi project so far. Its simple design doesn’t rely on oracles, and has minimal reliance on other parties. However, one point of centralization was its token list. When trading on Uniswap, the list of tokens you can trade with was chosen by the Uniswap team themselves. Other tokens had to be manually inputted by their smart contract address.
Today that changes as Uniswap introduces token lists. These let projects, such as Zerion, curate lists of tokens that users can choose to use. This decentralizes the token listing process, while preserving its value of preventing scam tokens from being supported. Token lists help Uniswap continue to be the most decentralized DeFi project ever.
Sushi Swap
SushiSwap, a Uniswap fork with a token, has just launched its liquidity mining program. Its “innovation” is the SUSHI token, which lets LPs earn fees on trades even after they leave a pool. SushiSwap says this better aligns incentives and rewards them for helping “to contribute to the growth of the pool”.
SushiSwap is not live yet but liquidity mining (if you dare) can be done for Uniswap LP tokens:
So far, the staking contracts and the yet to be launched code are unaudited, so be careful.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not provide financial advice.