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Uniswap
UniswapUNI

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Market Stats

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UNI

UNI

Uniswap

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UNI

UNI

Uniswap

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    N/A Uniswap

What is Uniswap (UNI)?

Uniswap (UNI) is an ERC-20 token that serves as the native governance token for Uniswap, an automated market maker (AMM) decentralised exchange built on the Ethereum blockchain. The token was introduced to grant shared community ownership, allowing holders to govern the protocol and guide its ecosystem development.

The primary utility of the UNI token revolves around protocol governance and community ownership:

  • Voting and Proposals: UNI holders can vote directly or delegate their voting rights on key decisions affecting protocol parameters, upgrades, and distribution of minted tokens.
  • Treasury Management: Holders govern the UNI community treasury.
  • Protocol Fee Switch: Governance controls the protocol fee switch contract, voting on which tokens to collect fees from.
  • Ecosystem Ownership: UNI grants control over the uniswap.eth ENS domain, the Uniswap Default List (tokens.uniswap.eth), and SOCKS liquidity tokens.
  • Fee Sharing: Holding the token confers governance rights over a proportionate amount of all transaction fees paid to the platform.

The official UNI introduction summary outlines key structural and governance commitments for the token:

  • Token Supply & Inflation: A 1 billion genesis token supply accessible over four years, followed by a perpetual annual inflation rate of 2%.
  • Allocation Framework: 60% assigned to the Uniswap community (including historical user claims and a 43% community treasury reserve), 21.266% to team members, 18.044% to investors, and 0.69% to advisors, all subject to a 4-year vesting schedule.
  • Shared Community Ownership: Direct protocol control granted to token holders over the community treasury, the protocol fee switch (with a 180-day timelock delay), ecosystem ENS names, and token lists.
  • Governance Rules: Formal thresholds establishing a 1% delegated supply requirement to submit proposals, a 4% quorum requirement for "yes" votes, a 7-day voting window, and a 2-day timelock before execution.
  • Liquidity Mining: Distribution of rewards via targeted pools (such as ETH/USDT, ETH/USDC, ETH/DAI, and ETH/WBTC) free of vesting or lockup restrictions.

The Uniswap protocol was created by Hayden Adams, who drew inspiration from a post by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to build a decentralized exchange based on automated market-making capabilities.

The UNI governance token was later introduced in September 2020 primarily to prevent users and liquidity from defecting to a rival exchange, SushiSwap, which had begun incentivising user migration with its own rewards.

The UNI governance token was launched in September 2020 through an airdrop distributed to platform users who had interacted with the protocol prior to September 1, 2020.

You can use the UNI token in the following ways:

  • Governance Voting: Participate directly in protocol decisions by casting votes on proposals affecting Uniswap.
  • Delegation: Delegate your voting weight to other community representatives if you choose not to vote yourself.
  • Creating Proposals: If you control enough voting weight (at least 1% of the total supply delegated), you can formally submit protocol proposals for community approval.
  • Trading and Liquidity: Hold, transfer, or trade UNI across supported Ethereum-compatible platforms and wallets, or earn it through designated liquidity mining pools.

Uniswap can be bought on the SwissBorg app with just a few clicks. Download the app for Android or iOS and exchange cryptos instantly at the best price.

Uniswap was designed to resolve several key friction points and vulnerabilities inherent to centralised trading platforms:

  • Censorship and Intermediaries: Traditional and centralized exchanges can arbitrarily halt trading, impose restrictive Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, or depend on centralized intermediaries. Uniswap offers permissionless, censorship-resistant trading without middlemen.
  • Order-Book Limitations: Conventional exchanges require matching individual buyers and sellers. Uniswap bypasses this with liquidity pools and a constant product market maker formula ($X \times Y = K$) to provide continuous liquidity.
  • Community Alignment: The UNI token addressed the threat of liquidity flight to competing platforms while turning platform ownership and fee mechanisms over to the active user base.

While earlier versions were fully open-source, Uniswap departed from purely open-source roots with the release of Uniswap V3 to prevent commercial duplication and unauthorized cloning.

Uniswap V3 Core smart contracts are publicly viewable on GitHub, but are licensed primarily under the Business Source License 1.1 (BUSL-1.1), which applies a time-delay on authorized commercial use of up to two years before transitioning to a permanent open-source license. Certain specific contract interfaces and libraries remain licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later or MIT.

UNI was minted at genesis on Ethereum with an initial fixed supply of 1 billion tokens structured over a 4-year release schedule:

  • Airdrop: 150 million tokens (15% of the supply) were immediately made available to historical protocol users, liquidity providers, and SOCKS token holders, awarding eligible historical users 400 UNI each.
  • Community Treasury: 430 million tokens (43%) were assigned to the community treasury.
  • Team & Investors: 21.266% was assigned to team members and future employees, 18.044% to investors, and 0.69% to advisors, all vesting over 4 years.
  • Liquidity Mining: Tokens were allocated across specific pools (ETH/USDT, ETH/USDC, ETH/DAI, and ETH/WBTC) without vesting locks.
  • Perpetual Inflation: After 4 years, a perpetual inflation rate of 2% annually takes effect to support ongoing protocol participation.

Uniswap’s scalability and transaction throughput are closely tied to the Ethereum network and its subsequent optimizations:

  • Protocol Iterations: Upgrades such as Uniswap V3 were specifically developed to handle higher transaction volumes, boost capital efficiency, and optimize liquidity.
  • Layer-2 Integrations: To combat high gas fees and network constraints on Ethereum, the protocol integrates layer-2 scaling solutions like Optimism, as well as Arbitrum and Base, providing faster and significantly cheaper transactions.

Uniswap operates under a decentralized, token-weighted governance system led by UNI holders:

  • Voting Weight: The number of UNI tokens held or delegated directly corresponds to voting power on protocol changes, distribution of minted tokens, and fee structures.
  • Proposal Submission: Submitting a governance proposal requires a delegation of at least 1% of the total UNI token supply.
  • Quorum & Voting: Reaching quorum requires a minimum 4% "yes" vote from the supply, and voting remains open for 7 days.
  • Execution: Once approved, proposals are subject to a 2-day timelock delay before execution (with a 180-day delay specifically governing the protocol fee switch).

The overarching vision for Uniswap is to serve as mission-critical, borderless financial infrastructure that delivers complete financial freedom and censorship-resistant trading. By continually refining automated market making, expanding onto layer-2 scaling networks, and transferring governance to the community via UNI, the protocol aims to build a fully decentralized alternative to traditional centralized finance.

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