The Faculty of Finance at the City University of Macau held the thirteenth academic salon of this academic year on March 5, 2025, in room G2213 on the Golden Dragon campus. The guest speaker is Daniel Liebau from Erasmus University. Liebau's topic was "The Governance of Decentralized Exchange Uniswap".

This paper investigates the drivers of vote delegation in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), using the Uniswap governance DAO as a laboratory. This paper shows that parties with fewer self-owned votes and those affiliated with the controlling venture capital firm, Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), receive more vote delegations. These patterns suggest that while the Uniswap ecosystem values decentralization, a16z may engage in window-dressing around it. Moreover, this paper finds that an active and successful track record in submitting improvement proposals, especially in the final stage, leads to more vote delegations, indicating that delegation in DAOs is at least partly reputation- or merit-based. Combined, these findings provide new insights into how governance and decentralization operate in Uniswap.

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In this academic salon, Daniel Liebau shared his latest research findings with the Faculty of Finance, broadening the academic scope of the faculty. The Faculty of Finance Academic Salon at the City University of Macau is a platform for exchanging academic ideas and enhancing academic awareness. We focus on finance, inviting experts from academia and the financial industry to discuss cutting-edge research and share industry development trends, aiming to bring new academic experiences and thinking models to the faculty and students of the university. We hope that through academic activities like the academic salon, we can provide a better academic platform for graduate students and encourage further exploration and research of academic issues among faculty and students.