Blockchain@Columbia and the Gnosis team are submitting an on-chain proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 to Gnosis Chain. With Uniswap V3's BSL expired on April 1st, deployment of Uniswap V3 on alt-L1's is crucial for Uniswap to establish market share post license expiry. After consultation with both the Gnosis and Wormhole teams, we think that it's crucial to deploy Uni V3 on Gnosis chain now as a step towards a multichain future.
The temperature check passed with 20M (100%) YES votes and 508 UNI (0%) NO votes.
This proposal has already been in discussion since April 2022, where it has passed both a snapshot check and temperature check with overwhelming support. Unfortunately, due to the Nomad bridge incident, deployment was put on hold. The Gnosis team has continued to work and push this proposal throughout this time and we believe that it's fair for their work to come into fruition after a year.
With the recent BSL expiry, this proposal comes at a crucial time. Expectedly, protocols will harp on this opportunity and use the same V3 design to extract value in ecosystems where Uniswap is absent. As such, we believe that it is important for Uniswap to capture this opportunity prior to the license expiration date before forks (which may or may not be safe) arise.
Additionally, Uniswap deployment on GC will be mutually beneficial for a number of reasons:
With Uniswap v3 as a cornerstone DeFi engine, various protocols will have the opportunity to interact within the ecosystem, further promoting growth. Perpetual Protocol, the flagship protocol on Gnosis Chanin, relies on Uniswap v3 and this deployment will enable Perpetual to continue to flourish on Gnosis Chain. Other bluechip deployments including Curve, Balancer, and Sushi have also chosen Gnosis as their home bases and shown steady growth in TVL. Complete metrics of Gnosis Chain are available at https://defillama.com/chain/Gnosis. Many new protocols will soon be deployed on Gnosis and we believe that Uniswap can be at the forefront of the next wave of DeFi on GC.
Gnosis Chain's ability to offer stable, low-cost transactions are directly beneficial to Uniswap users. With low gas costs that don't impact swaps and trades, GC can offer users the ability to deploy efficient strategies at a higher volume, generating more fees -- an opportunity not available on Ethereum mainnet.
Gnosis can provide an iterative environment where Uniswap Labs can experiment with new functionalities and front-run new features. Unlike a test environment, a real value environment like GC allows for a more accurate evaluation of the platform's capabilities. This also provides an opportunity for uniswap to identify and address any potential issues stemming from important Ethereum updates before their mainnet activation. With optimized slot and epoch times, Uniswap can ensure faster iteration and improve the overall efficiency of the platform.
Deploying Uniswap on Gnosis Chain ensures tight compatibility with Ethereum. GC currently supports various tools, resources, projects, and protocols that are already supported by Ethereum, with more being onboarded regularly. A full list of protocols on GC is available at https://gnosischain.world/. Many existing projects are using Gnosis Safe for their daily operations. The Gnosis team is also working on a trustless bridge architecture that will connect Ethereum and GC, providing seamless interoperability between the two chains. The Gnosis Beacon Chain validator set is expanding rapidly with 113,665 active validators at the moment, bringing massive decentralization to the chain. While the GBC shares many similarities with the Ethereum Beacon Chain, there are some notable differences. Notably, GBC has 5-second blocks and < 2-min epochs, which allow for faster transactions and has a lower gas target of $.01 per 100k gas, providing stable transactions. The validator set is economically and geographically diverse, ensuring greater decentralization with lower-stakes, lower-TVL environment.
The Gnosis Chain's unique characteristics such as stable, low-cost transactions offer significant advantages to Uniswap users. With predictable and low gas costs, traders can explore new strategies and approaches that may not be feasible on other chains with variable and high fees, such as the Ethereum mainnet. This presents an opportunity for Uniswap users to optimize their trades and maximize their returns, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience.
Gnosis Chain is committed to increasing their user base and on-chain activity by providing user incentives. To achieve this goal, GC has established an ecosystem fund that is strategically allocated from the GnosisDAO treasury to promote adoption. As part of our joint proposal, we suggest utilizing a portion of these funds to promote Uniswap v3 adoption. This initiative will encourage users to trade and stake their assets, ultimately promoting greater liquidity and activity on the platform. Through this program, we aim to attract more users and establish Uniswap as a leading DeFi protocol on the platform.
This section is from 0xPlasma Labs' proposal regarding Uniswap V3 deployment on BNB chain. As Wormhole is our bridge provider of choice for Gnosis deployment, their analysis is of utmost relevance for this proposal. Given that Wormhole has been chosen for BNB deployment, they already have the necessary resources to make deployment on Gnosis chain fast and efficient.
Does the bridge support arbitrary message passing? Yes, Wormhole is one of the first and longest-serving arbitrary messaging protocols. Since launching on mainnet in August 2021, 185 million messages have been transmitted, with 2 million messages currently generated daily between asset transfers and messaging through organic usage.
Is the bridge secured by a trusted entity, by a multi-sig, or a protocol/set of incentivized nodes? Wormhole is secured by 19 validators (aka: Guardians) who jointly attest to messages. Each message must be attested by at least 13 of the 19 Guardians. Our Guardian set comprises the leading PoS validators, including Staked, Figment, Chorus One, P2P, and more. The complete set of current validators can be found here. As mentioned above Wormhole is making significant progress in developing ZK-based light clients to facilitate completely trustless message-passing.
Does the bridge leverage the security of the source chain (e.g. Ethereum L1) or destination chain, or is the security provided by another third-party entity? Wormhole message security waits for both consensuses to be reached on the source chain as well as additional safety features provided by the bridge. Additionally, Guardians run full nodes to protect the protocol against consensus-level exploits in the connected chains and further reduce contagion risk.
Is it possible for a fraudulent message to be passed to the destination chain? If so, are there any recall mechanisms? All messages passing through Wormhole require a minimum of observation and signing by a majority of the Wormhole Guardian set (13 of 19). While there is currently no out-of-the-box recall mechanism for messages, a minority (7 of 19) Guardians may refuse to sign a fraudulent message and thwart an attack. Simple yet customized message recall functions can be built by individual integrators. An integrator would build "edge contracts" to introduce a time delay on message acceptance, providing an integrator with an opportunity to recall the message before it becomes effective.
What are the ramifications of fraud to the malicious actor? Wormhole's Guardians are leading PoS validators and some of the most respected names within the validator community. They collectively represent tens of billions in value staked and carry valuable reputations in the communities where they serve. Should they act maliciously (such as a sign or forge fraudulent messages), they risk reputational consequences, external PoS businesses, and ejection from the Wormhole Guardian set. There is little incentive for an individual Guardian to act maliciously. Even if a Guardian were to succeed in forging a fraudulent message, it would not affect the network state because a single signature isn't enough to establish the super-majority required to gain a quorum. Finally, a fraudulent message would be immediately attributable to the offending Guardian to the rest of the Guardian network.
Has the bridge code been audited? By a third party? What attack vectors and vulnerabilities were identified, if any? Have the identified vulnerabilities been remedied? The bridge has been audited 25+ times by leading audit firms, including Certik, Trail of Bits, and OtterSec, and the cohort of auditors continues to grow. You can see the complete list of auditors and publicized findings here. Those 25 audits are in addition to Wormhole's already rigorous internal auditing standards, where a team of 6 experienced security engineers regularly perform reviews of the protocol's security.
Blockchain@Columbia and the Gnosis team support changes to this setup. When a more efficient design is finalized, multi-chain deployment design should be altered with said solution through governance.
Granted that the on-chain vote is approved, Uniswap V3 deployment on Gnosis chain will be ready for deployment through Wormhole's cross-chain messaging service. We estimate that the backend of the deployment can be completed within a few days.
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