What is Uniswap? Exploring the World’s Largest Decentralized Exchange

Each bin has a fixed price, and liquidity is placed separately into these different bins. Uniswap V3’s Concentrated Liquidity model and Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book model provide excellent examples of liquidity efficiency upgrades at the protocol level. Throughout this article, liquidity efficiency will denote making the best possible use of currently available capital. However, DeFi remains highly capital-inefficient for a myriad of reasons. The core contributors to this inefficiency are the fragmentation of the DeFi landscape.

As such, they are most suited for holding smaller amounts or for more experienced frequent traders. It is possible that a portion of trading fees may be dedicated to Uniswap development in the future. The Uniswap team has already deployed an improved Uniswap v2 protocol, and are actively developing Uniswap v3. Understanding bins is essential to understanding the liquidity book model.

It continuously improves its services to streamline all the trading processes on its platform to run smoothly. Cryptocurrencies without depending on a central authority or intermediary, while maintaining censorship resistance. Operating on the Ethereum blockchain, Uniswap leverages smart contracts — self-executing programs on the blockchain with predetermined conditions directly written into code. In February 2021, it became the first decentralized exchange to process more than $100 billion in trading volume, and now frequently exceeds $1 billion in trading volume each day. This performance has seen it become not only the largest DEX by trading volume, but one of the top five most popular exchanges period.

Why Competition Drives Growth and Benefits DeFi

Interested in Uniswap, but not sure what it’s all about or where to even begin? This guide is designed to teach you everything you need to know about Uniswap and get you ready to jump into the most user-friendly trading experience available on the market. Thankfully, there are a number of Layer 2 scalability solutions to the rescue. These are akin to highways that plug into Ethereum’s existing one to alleviate its congestion. Some of the most popular ones are Arbitrum, dYdX, Optimism, and Loopring. Each has Uniswap in their offering of DApps with drastically lower gas fees.

Created by Hayden Adams in 2018, its implementation was inspired by the underlying technology first described by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Uniswap pioneered the Automated Market Maker model and played a crucial role in the invention and development of DEXs. Today, Uniswap continues to be one of the most user-friendly DEXs available, with substantial liquidity and an extensive selection of token listings. Uniswap is a decentralized crypto exchange powered by Ethereum and governed by its native token, UNI. In September 2020, Uniswap launched UNI, the network’s governance token, airdropping 400 UNI tokens to every wallet address that had interacted with the Uniswap protocol before September 1. V3 also adds more fee tiers, enabling traders to better determine their risk level when trading volatile assets (which can change in price between when a trade’s initiated and executed).

However, more practically-minded Buterin hinted that Uniswap would make more sense as in — Universal Swap of tokens. Things snowballed from there, with Pascal Van Hecke, one of Devcon 3’s attendees, giving Adams a grant. During this time, another Stony Brook alum joined them, Uciel Vilchis. Fast forward to March 2018, and Uniswap rose to a fully-featured demo.

This AMM backbone is called liquidity mining, and investors themselves are the liquidity providers. If you wanted to exchange one fiat currency for another, such as USD/EUR, you would do so in the foreign exchange or FOREX market. However, any time FOREX traders make a bid , it has to be matched with the opposing ask . To ensure that such trades are matched expediently, market makers are in charge of covering ask and bid spreads. Uniswap’s V3 pools, on the surface level, remain slightly more user-friendly than Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book model.

When the prices of assets diverge, the LP faces losses but hopes that the trading fees outweigh this. In many instances, it may be more profitable for investors to simply hold their tokens in their wallets rather than supplying liquidity. As long as the trade remains within the bin’s range, users who swap within a bin receive a fixed price, meaning no slippage and excellent price efficiency. All bins stack together, providing deep liquidity, and liquidity providers have the option to create more advanced strategies with different liquidity bin distributions. Ethereum’s market cap has grown more than 800%, and its daily trading volume has increased by more than 1,000%. This volume remains split over various centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges.

How Does Uniswap Make Money?

These are automatic computer programs that are designed to perform specific functions when certain conditions are met. As liquidity tokens are themselves tradable assets, liquidity providers may also sell, transfer, or otherwise use their liquidity tokens in any way they see fit. Trades performed on the Uniswap platform are secured by its “Exchange” smart contract, a decentralized marvel allowing for users to trade at any time without any need for a central authority. Uniswap ran a very valuable airdrop to celebrate its launch, offering 400 UNI tokens (estimated $1,500 at time of airdrop) to users who had previously used the Uniswap decentralized exchange protocol. Let’s break down the concept of Uniswap liquidity pools by using an ETH/DAI liquidity pool as an example.

• Additionally, Uniswap’s liquidity pools are an attractive endeavor for investors who want to earn income on the cryptocurrency they already hold – without selling it.
• The pools keep track of aggregate liquidity reserves and the pre-defined pricing strategies set by liquidity providers.
• As of February 2021, the UNI token price is ~$26, with a market capitalization of ~$8 billion.
• Throughout this article, liquidity efficiency will denote making the best possible use of currently available capital.
• Click on the Supply button and approve the contract interaction notification.
• The Uniswap team has already deployed an improved Uniswap v2 protocol, and are actively developing Uniswap v3.

The aim of the fund is to preempt regulatory and tax threats using lawyers, lobbyists and organizers, enabling the nascent DeFi space to counter “massive spending from traditional finance players.” In less than a year, Uniswap V2 has propelled the platform to meteoric growth. Though Uniswap launched back in November 2018, it wasn’t until relatively recently that the protocol began to see significant traction.

Uniswap (UNI) Price

The easiest way to buy UNI is through a centralized cryptocurrency exchange such as Coinbase or Kraken. Uniswap is likewise tremendously valuable to startup blockchain ventures that need to promptly deliver their tokens to the market and consider a more extensive potential customer base. These tokens can either be two ERC-20 or One ERC-20 and one ETH token. These pools typically comprise stablecoins such as USDC, DAI, or USDT, yet this is not a rule.

Buying and selling UNI, or exchanging them for any other cryptocurrency, is done in mere moments when you choose our secure platform as your storage solution. UNI can also be used for speculation and investment, or as an alternative to expensive and slow international transfers. Holders can bind their UNI to an address, delegating their voting power.

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However, this capability is known to all participants in advance, and to prevent abuse, the percentage is constrained between 10% and 25%. Most publicly accessible markets use a central limit order book style of exchange, where buyers and sellers create orders organized by price level that are progressively filled as demand shifts. Anyone who has traded stocks through brokerage firms will be familiar with an order book system. When it comes to deciding between Uniswap and its clones, there are a few factors to consider. If you are looking to trade popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, then Uniswap is likely your best option.

These are automated, decentralized programs that are designed to perform specific functions when certain conditions are met. One of the more unique things about Uniswap is the fact that the project itself does not receive any revenue. When all the liquidity from a bin has been used, the price moves to the next bin. And this dynamic structure is a key characteristic of the Liquidity Book model. However, Joe V2 has rapidly become one of the most popular DEXs on Arbitrum, gaining traction following the ARB airdrop and the rampant trading that took place. When you do this, Uniswap will send a connection request to your wallet, which you’ll need to approve manually.

In doing so, she increases the USDT portion and decreases the ETH portion of the pool. Traders can exchange any Ethereum ERC-20 tokens on Uniswap without having to rely on intermediaries or centralized entities. But Uniswap’s position as one of the leading DEXs has given it considerable clout.

It is a tool for members to exchange tokens easily without paying any platform charges or dealing with negotiators. Uniswap’s native token, UNI, was launched in September 2020 and has since been attracting users and LPs to the platform. UNI is an ERC-20 token, which means it was built on Ethereum and can be stored in any cryptocurrency wallet that supports ERC-20 tokens.

The Uniswap platform uses blockchain-based smart contracts to facilitate the decentralized trading of many different digital assets. Pairs of digital assets are swapped via liquidity pools, which use smart contracts to automatically rebalance after every trade. The Uniswap blockchain, which functions like an electronic ledger, is continually updated to reflect the trading activity occurring among Uniswap users. By functioning as an exchange without any central authority’s involvement, Uniswap is an automated market maker. Uniswap was launched in November 2018 and quickly gained popularity due to its unique automated market maker system. The platform allows users to trade cryptocurrencies without relying on order books.

Users receive the convenience of eliminating difficult verification processes before listing a coin or token for exchanging. Uniswap does not follow the conventional engineering of advanced trade and works without an order book. This method is a variation of a prototype known as AMM or Automated Market Maker. Ethereum, learn cryptocurrency trading, and be updated with relevant news.

As of February 2021, the UNI token price is ~$26, with a market capitalization of ~$8 billion. Participating in the Uniswap network requires connecting a compatible digital wallet. In addition, because the Ethereum platform collects fees for processing Uniswap transactions, Uniswap users need Ether to pay any transaction fees that they incur. A person who lends an analogous worth of two tokens in the pool is eligible to be a liquidity provider. This tax is then disseminated to liquidity providers depending on their share of the pool. Users could also trade between the tokens without the need for intermediate conversion to ETH.

Here you need to https://1investing.in/ the token pair or the pool to stake your tokens and provide liquidity. It is important to know that you can only enter liquidity pools with an equal dollar value of the two tokens in the pair. For example, if you want to add $1000 worth of liquidity in the ETH-USDC pool, you’ll need $500 in ETH and $500 in USDC to do so.

• When a pool contract is first created, its balances of each token are 0.
• In return, liquidity providers are given a percentage of the trading fees earned for that trading pair.
• Finally, you should also think about the additional features offered by the various platforms.
• However, any time FOREX traders make a bid , it has to be matched with the opposing ask .
• To match the buyers with sellers and determine cryptocurrency prices.

This causes the amount of what is the most affordable fee gateway and and USDT in the pool to decrease to 5 ETH and 2,000 USDT. Uniswap responded by creating 1 billion UNI tokens and decided to distribute 150 million of them to anybody who had ever used the platform. Each person received 400 UNI tokens, which at the time amounted to over $1,000. With this system, a buyer or seller does not have to wait for an opposite party to appear to complete a trade.

Hardware wallets can involve a bit more of a learning curve and are a more expensive option, however. As such, they may be better suited to storing larger amounts of UNI for more experienced users. This is a relatively recent innovation, launched in September 2020, at 4B UNI, when the DeFi market was really heating up. Moreover, Uniswap traders can use UNI tokens to vote on the team’s proposals, such as the protocol’s fee structure. Of course, their voting power is proportional to the amount of tokens they hold. When a trader taps into such a pool, they give a small cut to the liquidity providers, also called liquidity miners.

Essentially what Uniswap is doing is balancing out the value of tokens, and the swapping of them based on how much people want to buy and sell them. In the equation, x and y represent the quantity of ETH and ERC20 tokens available in a liquidity pool and k is a constant value. This equation uses the balance between the ETH and ERC20 tokens–and supply and demand–to determine the price of a particular token. Whenever someone buys Durian Token with ETH, the supply of Durian Token decreases while the supply of ETH increases–the price of Durian Token goes up. Uniswap is an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange that allows anyone to swap ERC20 tokens.

Going forward, users are also able to earn UNI tokens by staking tokens in Uniswap’s liquidity pools. Staking tokens in order to reap rewards from liquidity pools is commonly known as yield farming or liquidity mining. Uniswap is an innovative decentralized exchange protocol built on Ethereum. Thanks to the contracts built into its protocol, Uniswap is able to allow users to trade without any intermediaries, achieving a high level of both decentralization and censorship-resistance. Speaking of risk, Uniswap liquidity providers still have to consider impermanent loss in their staking game. IL happens when locked tokens gain a different price from the time they were staked, regardless of whether the price went up or down.