For a while, I just thought @Uniswap V4 was another good tech upgrade but nothing around it would really change that much.

I was literally wrong when I realized the upgrade turned the biggest DEX into programmable liquidity infra.
V3 optimized where liquidity sits. V4 optimizes how liquidity behaves.
All pools now live inside one contract instead of deploying separate pool contracts every time.
Pool deployment cost dropped 99%, V4 tracks deltas through the transaction and settles only at the end.
Multi-hop swaps, LP changes, complex routes all get cleaner because the system doesn’t need to keep doing redundant token transfers between separate pool contracts.
Native ETH is back too, so no forced WETH wrapping tax. Around 15% gas saved on ETH swaps just from that while also reducing UX friction for degens.
But cheaper is just the surface. The real product is a permissionless AMM plugin layer.
V4 added hooks as external logic attached to a pool at creation. It can run before a swap, after a swap, before liquidity is added, after liquidity is removed, and so on.
Before this, if someone wanted dynamic fees, auto-rebalancing, TWAMM execution, limit orders, LP vault automation… they usually had to build an entire protocol on top of Uniswap.
Now V4 LPs can plug into pools where the fee, incentives, rebalancing, execution, and even market structure are programmable from day one.
There are around 1.8k V4 pools right now doing:
– $61.5M swap fees in Q1 2026, $29.4M in Q2-to-date
– $759.3M TVL
– $329B cumulative volume
– 2.5K+ custom hooks built
Funny how the market started noticing that hooks can turn liquidity design itself into the token game, then suddenly all the beta trades appeared.
– @unipegv4 | $uPEG: the hook fires on swaps to generate a unique SVG unicorn per trade.
– $SATO: fully immutable, admin-less V4 hook that mimics Bitcoin scarcity inside an AMM. The hook intercepts every swap, takes full custody of input ETH, and returns SATO it mints itself.
– @lo0pio | $LO0P: fuses an AMM and a money market inside one hook. Users buy $LO0P along a bonding curve, then lock those tokens to borrow ETH from the same pool.
This reminds me a bit of Ethereum smart contracts in 2020 honestly.
The thesis is V4 expands Uniswap’s surface area from swap venue into liquidity middleware.
Hook devs can now borrow Uniswap’s settlement, brand, routers, liquidity network, and LP base, then add their own custom behavior on top.
Once the primitive becomes permissionless and composable enough, ppl start building things nobody originally expected.
First time in a while Uniswap stopped defending its moat and started expanding it again.