Uniswap v4 BSL Debates

Debates surrounding Business Core License (BSL) with regard to Uniswap v4 abound. For the uniniated, BSL is a type of license by which the source code of an initiative is always open source whereas only the non-production use of the code is free with probable additions for more limited use cases.

BSL expires on the Change Date, or 4 years after the initial publicization of the code. Upon J. Prestwich’s deployment of a community-led version of Uni v4 on Goerli, myriad voices add to the debate.

Whereas some friends objectively refer to Goerli version as an onchain civil disobedience, other renowned voices point out to the fact that there have been, and are, other projects which used the same license.

It seems much-anticipated EigenLayer’s contracts bear the same license. Though, as Attali states that nothing particular happens in the absence of noise, it should have already been clear by now that that which people are not comfortable about the BSL licensing in the case of Uni v4 is the open call to build together in the open whilst retaining such a limited license.

However, oftentimes, people also tend to forget that organizations might need to take such precautions because of complex relations, regulations, marketual knowledge problems, and the very nature of human behavior—one never knows the intricacies of the markets, organizations.

Read Hayden Adams’ take here.

The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction.
Friedrich A. von Hayek