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Comment by ccamrobertson | Hacker News Reader

The use of the BSL 1.1 for Uniswap Core is one of the most interesting parts of this announcement. It will certainly slow wholesale cloning of their smart contracts.

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Wonder how that will be enforced given the decentralized nature of these contracts.

The smart contracts live entirely on the blockchain, and therefore cannot be shut down absent shutting down or hard forking the entire Ethereum network.

However 99% of Defi users interact with these smart contracts through web-based front ends that are centrally hosted like any other site.

In the case of a copyright violation, Uniswap LLC could get an injunction against any web front end that interacts with the forked DeX.

You can host on IPFS and there would be no way to stop the service. Just the routing to it perhaps. But you can go a step further and use a ENS domain and point it to your IPFS site. Truly permisionless and decentralized.

Technically the interface is still GPLv3 so just changing the smart contact locations isn't in violation of any licence agreements.

>In the case of a copyright violation, Uniswap LLC could get an injunction against any web front end that interacts with the forked DeX.

How big of a problem is this? As we seen with piracy sites these court ordered blocks aren't exactly effective.

> Uniswap LLC could get an injunction against any web front end

Can they? The front end is still GPLv3.

Well, the folks putting out the unlicensed clone would have to be anonymous to keep from being sued for copyright infringement. But if you are anonymous in the defi space, users are a lot less likely to trust your product.

>But if you are anonymous in the defi space, users are a lot less likely to trust your product.

Isn't the whole point of difi that you don't have to trust them?

Not that much less. SushiSwap is run by mostly anons and it is the #2 AMM.

> wholesale cloning of their smart contracts

Maybe stop cloning by US entities, if Uniswap is a US company, but it won't stop many other entities to clone it if the contracts have their source available.

True, it's up to Uniswap to enforce if cloned and the local venue's respect of software licenses. But an intentional clone that's clearly copying the code and under threat of litigation likely won't be appealing for a lot of exchanges to list.

> clearly copying the code and under threat of litigation

Half of the ecosystem wouldn't exist if people were scared of litigation and/or not copying code/ideas from others.

Most of the ecosystem has been open source thus far.

Almost everything in crypto is MIT licensed. This is an interesting experiment in licensing.

more like 98% lol

So is this effectively a company that relies on a permissionless platform adopting a permissioned license?

I thought permissionless was the ethos in the blockchain ecosystem

Right, it's a very strong stand to take in the space. I suspect most Uniswap users won't care, the code is still fully auditable under the BSL.

Given the entire Sushi saga, I'm wouldn't be surprised if there was pressure from big UNI holders (read: VCs) for a move like this, but I'm curious to see if there is any community fallout.

Agreed, do the core developers leave the project is the big one I was thinking about. This has happened (for other reasons) to other projects and it effectively makes them dead or dying

Just becuase we cannot express this kind of permission in the platform doesn't make the platform permissionless.

Blockchains are built on permissions - at the heart is the asymmetric key cryptography, giving permissions to smart contacts, tokens that grant permissions, etc.

I think you are misunderstanding the connection to how the blockchain community defines "permissionless blockchain"

It's about who can participate, build with, and make money with blockchain tech.

The BSL is a permissioned license in that it grants different rights based on who you are and essentially wants to prevent you from making money

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