Uniswap 

UNI Price

What is the Uniswap DEX?

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol built on an automated market maker (AMM) model, launched on Ethereum in November 2018. Trades execute against liquidity pools instead of order books. Uniswap v4 went live on Ethereum mainnet on January 30, 2025, adding hooks — plugins that customize pool behavior. Uniswap Labs reports over $4 trillion in cumulative protocol volume. The Uniswap DAO governs the protocol, which is distinct from Uniswap Labs, the company behind the interface, wallet and Unichain Layer 2.

How is the UNI governance token used?

UNI is the ERC-20 governance token of the Uniswap Protocol. The token confers voting and delegation rights in the Uniswap DAO. All 1 billion UNI were minted at genesis in September 2020 — no ICO or public sale ever took place. UNI pays no staking yield: since the UNIfication proposal passed in December 2025, protocol fees fund UNI burns instead of holder payouts.

What is the UNI total supply and how are tokens allocated?

UNI has a fixed maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens, all minted at genesis in September 2020. Total supply now sits below that: roughly 100M UNI was burned in the December 2025 UNIfication, plus ongoing fee-linked burns (live figure on DropsTab). Allocation at genesis: 45% governance treasury, 21.51% team, 17.8% investors, 15% community distribution, 0.69% advisors.

Which contract address does the UNI token use?

UNI's canonical Ethereum contract address is 0x1f9840a85d5af5bf1d1762f925bdaddc4201f984, with 18 decimals, verifiable on Etherscan. Per DropsTab data, UNI has deployments across 15 networks, including Arbitrum One (0xfa7f8980b0f1e64a2062791cc3b0871572f1f7f0), Unichain, Polygon, Optimism, BSC, Avalanche, Linea and Scroll. Only the Ethereum address is canonical; other chains hold bridge or native deployments of the same token.

What is the UNI token unlock and vesting schedule?

The UNI token generation event took place on September 16, 2020. Team (21.51%), investors (17.8%) and advisors (0.69%) allocations vested linearly on a monthly schedule over 4 years with no cliff. The 15% community distribution unlocked in full at TGE as the airdrop. Per DropsTab vesting data, the 4-year schedule ended around September 16, 2024 — no scheduled insider unlocks remain. Future supply movement depends only on DAO treasury votes, so inflation risk from unlocks is minimal.

Does UNI have staking or fee sharing?

No. UNI holders earn no staking yield and receive no fee distributions. The UNIfication proposal passed in December 2025 with approximately 125.34M UNI voting FOR versus 742 AGAINST (99.9% support). The proposal deliberately chose burning over staking: v2/v3/v4 protocol fees and Unichain sequencer fees now route to a programmatic UNI burn, and **100M UNI** were burned retroactively at activation. The Uniswap Labs interface itself charges zero swap fees under UNIfication.

Who backed the Uniswap protocol?

Per DropsTab fundraising data, Uniswap raised across five rounds. Paradigm led the $1.8M seed in April 2019. a16z led the $11M Series A in July 2020, joined by Union Square Ventures, Paradigm, Variant and Blockchain Capital. Polychain Capital led the $165M Series B in October 2022 at a $1.66B pre-money valuation. BlackRock made a strategic investment on February 11, 2026 — the amount is not publicly disclosed.

What did the Uniswap airdrop distribute?

Uniswap distributed 400 UNI to each eligible address on September 16, 2020. The drop totaled 150M UNI — 15% of supply — across more than 250,000 wallets that had previously used the protocol. Unclaimed tokens later reverted to the Uniswap DAO treasury. The distribution remains one of DeFi's landmark retroactive airdrops and required no purchase, only prior protocol usage.

How do Uniswap v4 hooks work?

Hooks are plugins in Uniswap v4 that let developers customize pool behavior — dynamic fees, custom oracles and custom order types. Uniswap v4 launched on Ethereum mainnet on January 30, 2025. A large share of v4 activity runs on Unichain, the OP Stack-based Ethereum Layer 2 that Uniswap Labs launched in February 2025. Hooks concentrate flexibility at the pool level rather than requiring protocol-wide upgrades.

Where can you buy and trade UNI crypto?

Per DropsTab data, UNI trades across 190+ markets spanning spot, perpetual futures and DEX pairs. Spot venues include Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Bitget and Upbit, with quotes in USD, USDT, EUR, KRW, TRY and more. Perpetual futures list on Binance Futures, Hyperliquid, Kraken Futures and Deribit. UNI's deepest on-chain liquidity sits on Uniswap's own v2/v3 pools — UNI/WETH and UNI/USDT — plus PancakeSwap on BSC. Liquidity risk for UNI is negligible.