Uniswap, Duna, and the DAO versus equity reckoning
Who owns the protocol?
This article is adapted from a video essay by Tally CEO & Co-founder, Dennison Bertram. Watch the full video on X.
One of the most important questions in crypto right now is also one of the most uncomfortable: who actually owns a decentralized protocol? Not the token, not the DAO, not the company. Who captures the value when the protocol wins?
For years, crypto has lived with a quiet contradiction. Protocols call themselves decentralized while value quietly accrues somewhere else. Uniswap’s unification proposal, the creation of the DUNI, and parallel fights happening at Aave and Morpho signal something much bigger. DAOs are finally forcing a reckoning with equity.
The core problem: DAOs versus equity
Most DeFi protocols were born the same way. A founding team raises venture capital, builds a protocol, and later launches a token. A DAO forms after the token launch, but the company still exists. The equity still exists. The investors still exist.
Unless you very deliberately design around this, you get a split brain. Token holders expect decentralization, governance, and value capture. Equity holders expect revenue, optionality, and exits. The protocol becomes incredibly valuable, but valuable to whom?
This is not theoretical. Uniswap has processed trillions of dollars in volume. For years, UNI holders got governance and vibes. The protocol had a fee switch, but it stayed off, mostly for legal reasons. The company launched fee-charging front-ends, which were enormously successful. They launched new products without DAO input. No one was acting maliciously, but the incentives were misaligned. And for much of this time, the regulatory environment was extremely complicated.
Eventually, this tension always explodes.
Uniswap’s unification: what actually changed
In late 2025, Uniswap dropped what might be the most important governance proposal in DeFi history: unification. This was not a cosmetic tweak. This was a structural reset. Major credit to Hayden for leaning into the principles of decentralization.
Here’s what changed:
Protocol fees finally got turned on (or will get turned on), not to pay dividends, not to fund a foundation, but to buy and burn UNI. Every time Uniswap wins, the UNI supply goes down. That’s a clear, legible value loop: usage, fees, burn, token scarcity.
Uniswap Labs committed to stop charging fees on the web interface, the wallet, and even the APIs. This is a huge step. The company voluntarily shut down private monetization in favor of protocol-level value capture. That’s enormous. Major props to Hayden for making this work and getting all the investors aligned.
Uniswap Labs doesn’t disappear. Instead, it’s changing roles. Rather than being a semi-independent startup with its own incentives, Labs becomes a service provider to the DAO, funded by a transparent on-chain budget.
Crucially, this is enabled by the DUNI, the legal breakthrough.
The DUNI: why legal structure matters
Uniswap didn’t just do economic alignment. They did legal alignment. They created the DUNI, a Wyoming Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA). This matters more than most people realize.
Before the DUNI, the DAO couldn’t sign contracts. It couldn’t own IP. It couldn’t enforce obligations. If there was an agreement, how would you enforce it? No one represents the DAO.
After the DUNI, the DAO gets its own legal personhood. It can contract with Uniswap Labs to keep building. It can hold its own assets. It can have its own bank accounts. It can enforce alignment in court. It can take parties to court for failure to adhere to agreements.
This is how Uniswap pulled off something rare: the DAO now has leverage. Labs is contractually bound to act in the DAO’s best interest. Budgets are governed. Conflicts are defined. This is real decentralization with teeth.
When alignment breaks: the Aave situation
The contrast with Aave is instructive. The Aave DAO is currently locked in a public debate about who owns the Aave brand, who controls the Aave domain, and who gets to monetize new products that carry the Aave name.
The uncomfortable reality is that there’s tension. The DAO funded a great amount of the growth. The DAO bootstrapped a great amount of the liquidity. The DAO helped build the brand of Aave. But a private company still controls key assets.
This creates an existential question: if the company can monetize the brand without the DAO, what does the token really own?
Stani and Aave have done an incredible job. This isn’t about personalities. It’s about structure. All DAOs are going to have to deal with this. All organizations with protocols will face it. Aave is discovering in real time that implicit alignment doesn’t last forever.
The Morpho option
Morpho chose a radically different path. They didn’t tweak incentives. They eliminated equity misalignment entirely. Morpho merged the for-profit company into a nonprofit controlled by the DAO.
That means no shareholders, no exits, no private monetization. If Morpho wins, the token wins. Full stop.
This is extreme, and not every project can do it. But it reveals something important: alignment is not a spectrum. Either it exists or it eventually breaks.
What this means for DAOs going forward
There are a few hard truths to internalize:
Governance without value capture is fragile. Legal ambiguity benefits insiders, not communities. Brands, front-ends, and domains are a kind of power. Being decentralized is meaningless without enforcement.
Uniswap’s unification is not perfect, but it’s a workable blueprint. Aave’s conflict is not a failure. It’s a warning. Morpho’s structure is not idealistic. It’s pragmatic.
DAOs and protocols are growing up. The next generation of protocols will be built differently. DAOs will own IP from day one. Value loops will be explicit. Equity will be structurally subordinate or gone. Even without DAOs, organizations will have labs entities with much better aligned roles.
The era of “trust me, we’re aligned” is ending. Uniswap showed that alignment can be engineered. Aave shows what happens when it isn’t. Morpho shows what happens when you go all the way.
The real question isn’t whether DAOs can govern. It’s whether they can own. And now, finally, they’re learning how.
Tally provides token infrastructure for the most successful teams in crypto. We help teams launch, govern, and operate token-based systems at institutional scale. If you’re interested in launching with Tally, schedule a free sales consultation.