Binance Denies Allegations It Intends to Use Users' Uniswap Tokens for Voting

Crypto exchange Binance denied allegations of misusing its users’ token holdings to exercise voting power on the Uniswap decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

“Binance doesn’t vote with user’s tokens. In this case, there has been a misunderstanding of what happened during the transfer of a large balance of UNI (around 4.6 million) between wallets,” a Binance spokesperson told CoinDesk this morning.

“We’re currently in discussions to improve the process to prevent any further misunderstandings from happening again,” they added. Separately, Binance pointed out in a Thursday tweet that its wallet had never voted on any Uniswap governance proposal.

The statements were in response to Uniswap creator Hayden Adams claiming on Wednesday that Binance delegated some 13 million UNI, Uniswap’s native tokens, from its books, to become the second-largest UNI delegate.

A group of core developers maintains the Uniswap codebase, but key protocol decisions are governed by the Uniswap DAO, which grants users voting rights according to how many UNI tokens they hold.

Users may also “delegate” their tokens to other entities, thereby enabling those entities to vote on their behalf.

Binance currently retains 5.9% of the voting power on Uniswap, second only to venture capital giant a16z, which controls 6.7%, as reported.