I just reread about Uniswap and want to share some interesting things. What is Uni? It is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Ethereum, allowing you to swap ERC-20 tokens directly without any intermediary. Its way of working is also quite unique—rather than using traditional order books, Uniswap uses an Automated Market Maker (AMM), essentially a liquidity pool that anyone can interact with directly on the blockchain.

The UNI token is native to this protocol. There are currently about 636 million UNI in circulation (out of a maximum total supply of 1 billion), and holding it lets you vote on development proposals for the platform. You can also use UNI to create liquidity pairs and earn rewards.

The story behind it is also great. Hayden Adams, the founder, was laid off from his engineering job at Siemens in 2017. After that, he began researching Ethereum and smart contracts, and even met with Vitalik Buterin in Seoul in 2018 to encourage the development of the project. Uniswap officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet in November 2018.

What’s great about Uniswap is that it doesn’t stop there. Its V3 lets liquidity providers choose their trading fee levels, and recently Uniswap even acquired Genie to integrate an NFT aggregator. The Swap Widget is also an interesting feature—allowing developers to easily embed trading functionality into their apps.

Uniswap is now not only available on Ethereum, but also on Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. This is why it’s so popular in the DeFi community. And if you’re wondering what uni is economically, its distribution is quite fair: 60% for the community, 21% for employees, 18% for investors, and 0.69% for advisors. A 2% inflation model will begin 4 years after minting, ensuring ongoing participation.

Uniswap has attracted support from major investment funds such as a16z Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Delphi Digital. Currently, it has the highest TVL on Ethereum—something that shows the community’s level of trust. If you don’t know what uni is yet or haven’t used it before, maybe this is a good time to learn more.