Uniswap’s Wyoming DAO Plan: Fee-Switch Coming?

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🛠️ Uniswap sets up legal shield for fee switch

• 💳 Stripe dives deeper into crypto with its own blockchain

• 🧾 Do Kwon eyes guilty plea deal

• 🪙 ALT5 drops $1.5B on WLFI tokens

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Uniswap Proposes Wyoming ‘DUNA DAO’ to Lay Groundwork for Fee Switch

The Uniswap Foundation has proposed a new legal and governance structure under Wyoming law — a Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA) named DUNI — designed to provide legal clarity, liability protections, and operational capabilities for Uniswap Governance, laying the groundwork for future initiatives such as the long-discussed fee switch.

The fee switch allows Uniswap governance to divert a part of liquidity provider (LP) fees to the protocol treasury.

The proposed structure is designed to provide legal clarity and bolster liability protections for Uniswap Governance participants, enabling governance to conduct off-chain activities such as tax compliance and legal defense, potentially including routing a portion of swap fees to the treasury in the future.

If the proposal passes, the Treasury will send $16.5 million worth of Uniswap’s native token UNI to a DUNI-owned wallet to prefund a legal defense budget and a tax compliance budget.

UNI rallied 9% to an intraday high of $11.86 shortly after the proposal was published, before settling under $11.16 late on Monday. 

“As the DAO evolves, so too must the legal and regulatory frameworks that support it,” said the Uniswap Foundation on X.

“We’re excited for Governance’s next era: one that’s defined by greater autonomy, recognition, and sustainability.”

Stripe Is Building Its Own Layer 1 Blockchain: Report

Fintech firm Stripe is developing a new high-performance, payments-focused layer 1 blockchain called Tempo in partnership with the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, according to a report from Fortune. 

The Ethereum-compatible blockchain aims to enhance stablecoin payment processing by cutting costs, speeding settlement, and deepening enterprise adoption.

Tempo fits within Stripe's broader crypto strategy, which includes recent acquisitions of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge for $1.1 billion and crypto wallet developer Privy, allowing Stripe to control key pieces of the stablecoin payments ecosystem.

The strategy also aligns with recent stablecoin regulatory clarity in the U.S. following the passage of the GENIUS Act into law.

Stripe is the largest privately-owned fintech with a valuation of about $91 billion and has processed over $1.4 trillion in payment volume as of 2024. 

Do Kwon May Plead Guilty in US Fraud Case

A newly filed court order suggests that Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, the company behind the defunct blockchain Terra and its stablecoin UST, may change his plea to “guilty” in the U.S. government’s fraud case against him.

“The Court has been advised that the defendant may enter a change of plea. The Court schedules a conference for this purpose on August 12, 2025 at 10:30 a.m,” said U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer.

Kwon initially pleaded not guilty in January to nine felony counts including securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, market manipulation, and money laundering conspiracy arising from the $40 billion Terra ecosystem collapse in 2022.

U.S. prosecutors have prepared vast evidence for trial, but a guilty plea may resolve the criminal case against Kwon without further litigation.

In some cases, a guilty plea could result in a lesser sentence for the defendant. Although the terms of Kwon’s potential deal with prosecutors are unclear, Kwon’s lawyers said they have held “productive discussions” on the issues of the case. 

ALT5 Sigma Raises $1.5 Billion for WLFI Treasury

ALT5 Sigma Corporation is raising $1.5 billion through a combination of a registered direct stock offering and a concurrent private placement to fund a corporate treasury centered on World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens.

The company plans to sell 200 million shares at $7.50 each, equally split between the two offerings.

ALT5 Sigma is a fintech company with two main offerings: ALT5 Prime, an electronic over-the-counter trading platform for digital assets, and ALT5 Pay, a cryptocurrency payment gateway.

As per the terms of the deal, ALT5 Sigma will receive $750 million worth of WLFI tokens at a price of $0.20 per token in exchange for shares and warrants, while the other $750 million paid in cash. 

After the deal closes, ALT5 will own about 7.5% of the total WLFI supply in its treasury. World Liberty Financial cofounder Zach Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump will also join ALT5’s board of directors.

ALT5 shares dropped 26% after the announcement, reversing after a 35% rally between last Wednesday and Friday.

• 📈 Ether ETFs logged a record $1.01 billion in daily inflows—far surpassing Bitcoin funds—as ETH jumped 45% in a month and big names like BlackRock and Fidelity saw unprecedented demand.

• 🏢 FTX customers moved to expand their lawsuit against law firm Fenwick & West, claiming new evidence from Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial shows the firm helped design structures that enabled the multibillion-dollar fraud.

• 📜 Stablecoin issuer Paxos applied to convert its New York trust charter into a national bank license, joining Ripple and Circle in seeking OCC oversight amid the U.S. rollout of new stablecoin regulations.

• 🚫 Senate Banking Committee Democrats warned that a GOP-backed crypto bill could let traditional assets bypass SEC rules through tokenization, risking investor protections and market stability.

• 📈 Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish boosted its IPO target to nearly $1 billion by increasing share volume and price range, potentially valuing the firm at $4.2 billion.

• 🛫 Ethereum core developer Federico Carrone said he is “safe and free” after a 24-hour detention in Turkey over alleged ties to a privacy tool, later donating $500K in ETH to support Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm’s legal defense.

• 💳 Blue Origin partnered with Shift4 Payments to let customers book New Shepard spaceflights using bitcoin, ether, solana, USDT, or USDC, joining a growing trend of blockchain ventures extending beyond Earth.

• 🏦 S&P Global assigned a ‘B-’ credit rating to Sky Protocol—the first for a DeFi platform—citing risks like governance centralization, low capitalization, and regulatory uncertainty despite its stablecoin market position.

• 🤝 Tether and Rumble jointly offered $1.17 billion to buy all shares of AI firm Northern Data, a deal that would make Tether Rumble’s largest shareholder and shift Northern Data’s focus fully to AI and high-performance computing.

• 🪙 Heritage Distilling announced a $340 million treasury plan to hold IP tokens as its primary reserve asset, backed by a16z crypto and others, marking the first public company to adopt the blockchain-based intellectual property token.

• 🔗 BitMine Immersion expanded its ether stash to 1.15 million ETH worth $4.9 billion, cementing its lead as the largest corporate ETH holder after adding $1.3 billion in tokens in a week.

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