People have asked why the Uniswap Foundation executive compensation is considered unusually high. Let’s compare UF to another large grants-giving organization: the Optimism Grants Council.

UF filings show they gave $9,992,919 in grants, and had $4,794,393 in employee compensation. Of that, $3,871,155 was for officers.

That’s $4.8m in employee compensation to deliver $10m of grants. Let’s be generous and assume the $2.8m of Other Expenses were supporting Uniswap on par with grants.

UF: $4.8m in comp to deliver $12.8m in spending in 2024

Optimism Grants Council in roughly the same time period had total grants budget of $63.5m (based on price of OP at time of each budget approval).

The compensation to reviewers and follow-up staff was $2,139,300 (based on price of OP at time of each budget approval. KYC services were handled by Optimism Foundation so let’s be conservative and add another $500k expense.

That leaves us with the clear picture that Uniswap Foundation has vastly overpaid themselves. The 3 top executives cost as much as the entire Optimism Grants Council apparatus, and delivered 20% of the funding.

UNI holders should expect the UF board to explain clearly what value they have delivered, because 22% of the entire spend by UF in 2024 went to paying the officers.