GFX Labs – DAO governance, Uniswap fee switch, onchain lending | Fundamentals ep. 65

In this episode of the Fundamentals podcast, we’re joined by Getty Hill, the Co-Founder of GFX Labs, a multi-faceted blockchain research and development company. GFX Labs operates as both a crypto products studio and an active DAO governance contributor.

On the product side, GFX has built various products including Interest Protocol, Web3 Sheets, and most recently the advanced DeFi trading platform Oku Trade which is powered by Uniswap v3.

On the governance side of things, which GFX is widely known for, they have an active role in the governance of MakerDAO, Optimism, Uniswap, 0x, and Arbitrum.

Listen to the episode

We speak about how GFX operates, the current state of DAO governance, and what an ideal DAO could look like. We dive into Uniswap’s fee switch and GFX’s stance on it, and also discuss the onchain borrow-lend market sector, the biggest opportunities and challenges in that space, and much more!

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:06 UniswapX: first impression
03:38 Overview of GFX Labs
04:50 The core problem that GFX Labs solves
06:25 How does GFX Labs fund operations?
10:00 A primer on DAO governance
11:12 Which DAOs stand out as of today?
12:43 How does GFX Labs approach and contribute to DAO governance?
14:15 Current voting power
16:12 Is DAO governance professional enough yet?
19:10 The shortcomings in current DAO governance models
22:12 Is voting power too centralized?
23:17 The Community Proposal Factory (CAP): what and why?
24:48 The problem with Snapshot voting
25:54 The amount of effort that goes into governance proposals
28:23 Uniswap's fee switch
31:02 Why is now the right time to turn on the fee switch?
34:54 Where have previous fee switch proposals fallen short?
36:40 State of the onchain lending market
38:40 Undercollateralized lending in DeFi
41:12 Current opportunities within the lending market sector
42:10 What's next for GFX Labs? Oku Trade

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