Concern as Uniswap-backed ‘DeFi Education Fund’ dumps $10M value of UNI

By Clark

The recently created DeFi Education Fund has come under fire  for abruptly announcing it had liquidated half the one million UNI tokens given to that through UNI governance.

The controversial Uniswap-funded DeFi Education Fund has liquidated half its given funding into stablecoins, attracting condemnation from several within the crypto community.

On June 12, the fund tweeted that it was marketing 500,000 UNI to Genesis commerce for 10.2 million USDC in an  over-the-counter (OTC) trade, despite the Uniswap proposal for the fund indicating it might liquidate the one million UNI over 4 to 5 years.

In May, the student organization, Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative, launched a governance proposal advocating for the creation of the fund and allocation of one million UNI (worth roughly $18 million at current prices) to the entity to support instructional initiatives and policy lobbying for the decentralized finance sector.

At the beginning of this month, the proposal was passed and also the UNI tokens were transferred to the fund.

The incident has reignited issues concerning the centralization of Uniswap’s governance method, and referred to as questioning the transparency and motives of the fund.

Blockchain sleuths were able to determine that Larry Sukernik, one amongst the multi signers behind the education fund, had sold 2,612 UNI simply a number of hours before the OTC deal. On Twitter, Sukernik defended the trade, stating the UNI he sold was from a grant he’d solely received a number of weeks ago.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, DeFi Watch founder, Chris Blec, stressed that Harvard Law had created it clear “the intent was to to step by step sell the 1m UNI over a 4-5 year , and not dump giant amounts quickly.”

“The Fund then simply sold 50% of the 1M UNI for USDC while not clarifying. They still haven’t explained why, despite many individuals asking them nowadays,” he added.

On July 13, Blec denote a governance thread exacting transparency concerning the fund, expressing issues concerning the pick method close the proposal, the creation of the fund, and also the attainable role of Uniswap capitalist, Andresson piano player (a16z), in influencing the events.

“The DeFi Education Fund committee members, the Uniswap core team and its investors (including a16z) have refused to answer any specific queries exhibit to them concerning the fund’s origins, who came up with the concept, however future policy are going to be derived, and more,” Blec wrote, noting that a letter he sent to Andressen piano player had been “willfully ignored.”

“After the vote finished and also the Fund was created, I sent a new set of queries on June 29  to a16z, because it appeared that the vote solely won because of governance delegates using voting  power given to them by a16z. These queries were additionally wilfully ignored.”

Blec also called Sukernik to face down from the fund’s committee, telling Cointelegraph: “Even if it absolutely was unintentional, the looks of a member of this committee marketing UNI tokens from his own account just hours before triggering an enormous 500K UNI sale is precisely the sort of behavior that will trigger a regulator.”

“It would send the proper message if Sukernik resigned from the committee and allowed some other person to take his place.”