Having proven product-market fit for highly decentralized financial infrastructure with a platform that has thrived independently, Uniswap is now particularly well positioned for community-led growth, development, and self-sustainability. The introduction of UNI (ERC-20) serves this purpose, enabling shared community ownership and a vibrant, diverse, and dedicated governance system, which will actively guide the protocol towards the future.
Uniswap has always embraced the tenets of neutrality and trust minimization : it is crucial that governance is constrained to where it is strictly necessary. With this in mind, the Uniswap governance framework is limited to contributing to both protocol development and usage as well as development of the broader Uniswap ecosystem.
In doing so, UNI officially enshrines Uniswap as publicly-owned and self-sustainable infrastructure while continuing to carefully protect its indestructible and autonomous qualities.