Builder Update #34: The Future of DAOs is Now

community news

duni is official: this week, the duni proposal passed with 52.9m votes, making uniswap governance the largest dao to adopt the duna framework. this vote represents the first time we've executed legal agreements onchain: the association, ministerial agent & administrator agreements are now binding contracts ratified by decentralized governance.icymi, duni empowers uniswap governance with new operational capacity, allowing the dao to enter contracts with devs and protocols, pave the way for protocol fees, and provide legal protection for participants. wyoming rocks forever. you can learn more here.

the future of daos: our governance angel porter hosted a livestream discussion with miles (a16z crypto), connor (decentralization research center), and brian (uf) on the duna framework and its implications for onchain communities. they explored how dunas enable legal recognition without compromising decentralization, protect participants from regulatory uncertainty, and make code law with real-world effect. watch the full recording here.

markets drive grants: in july, we launched a pilot program with butter to explore the impact of market-driven grant allocation through conditional funding markets (cfms). over five days, 29 forecasters traded more than $70k in volume, awarding morpho the $100k grant for unichain lending protocol growth. morpho exceeded projections, generating $207m 30-day trailing tvl - 11.8% higher than expected. while the pilot surfaced challenges around insider participation and forecasting complexity, it proved cfms can work under the right conditions. read the retro here.

gorillionaire takes the crown: atrium academy’s hook product accelerator held its jokerace contest this week, with 11 teams competing. gorillionaire - a hook to automate and optimize liquidity for traders and lps - won first place, followed by semantic layer's agent-conomy experiment hook in second.

euler's billion dollar growth: eulerswap hit $3b in volume while euler lending also reached $3b. we’re so proud that eulerswap was built with support from the hook design lab and continues crushing it. they grow up so fast.

hooks will cook: our friend peteris broke down the angstrom whitepaper here - another gorgeous protocol born from our hook design lab.

researchers unite: we’re super excited that fahad and brad's new podcast the canonical pod is live, diving deep into pectra's scaling improvements: from doubling blob capacity for l2 scaling to increasing validator effective balance to reduce network messages. they also explore post-pectra plans and more. check it out on youtube.

work with me: we’re looking for a cracked protocol engineer to join the technical team to work on all things uniswap. apply here, or refer someone by responding to this email.

origin stories: devin went on 11am with seed club to talk about the origin story of the uf and the duni proposal. always good to share the lore. watch the interview here.

builder stories: aegis

v4 introduced a powerful new primitive: hooks, customizable smart contracts that reimagine how liquidity pools can operate. yet today, most fee models are still static: hardcoded, inflexible, and blind to market conditions.

developed by solo labs, with support from the hook design lab, aegis is a dynamic fee hook that’s designed to bring fees to life: optimizing cap efficiency, protecting lp value, and automatically adapting to market volatility. we recently caught up with the team to learn more about aegis, and lp protection irl.

addressing defi's static fee problem:
static fees create an impossible tradeoff: too expensive in calm markets so you lose volume, dangerously inadequate during volatility so lps get burned. we built aegis to bring professional market-making dynamics to v4 with fees that actually adapt to real-time conditions rather than just hoping for the best.

building a path to better execution:
our hook has been live since early july and the data speaks for itself. aegis is routinely the cheapest execution path—0.04% vs 0.05% during calm periods. dynamic pricing has halved adverse selection versus fixed fees. we're seeing strong adoption from bridges for settlement, and aggregator participation is ramping up with kyber integration and 1inch in progress.

finding the regenerative flywheel:
the data confirms what we hoped: during volatility spikes, surge fees kick in to protect lps while keeping liquidity in the pool. lps are earning around 5x their base take during surge periods versus the normal 1.3x uplift, and spreads stay tight for everyone else. it’s working exactly as designed. deeper liquidity drives stability, which attracts volume, which generates more fees for even deeper liquidity. enter the regenerative flywheel.

you can just build things (on unichain)

build on the pink chain, get rewarded: congrats to the unichain builders that earned retro funding last month: @mintclubpro, @catex_fi, @openoceanglobal, @layer3xyz, @lifiprotocol, @ensobuild, @onchaingm, @znsconnect, @cryptorubic, @bunni_xyz, @omni_hub, @socketprotocol, and @kelpdao. optimism’s s8 grants are open through december. if you’re ready to apply, porter made a (detailed, perfect) guide for how to prep your submission.

gauntlet’s great: their 3-month incentive campaign retro dropped impressive numbers - +$33b in volume to be exact - that's $1,000+ cumulative volume gain per $1 spent. you love to see it.

unimon season 2 bts: the unimon team came by the livestream this week to dive what players can expect from season 2, and what went into building out the world.

sol flows fast: one week, $1 million in sol transferred to unichain via portal bridge, powered by wormhole. the multichain momentum keeps building. the uni incentive will run for a few more days.