Uniswap (UNI) is an Ethereum token that powers Uniswap, an automated liquidity provider that’s designed to make it easy to exchange Ethereum (ERC-20) tokens. There is no orderbook or central facilitator on Uniswap. Instead, tokens are exchanged through liquidity pools that are defined by smart contracts.
Uniswap pioneered the Automated Market Maker model, in which users supply Ethereum tokens to Uniswap “liquidity pools” and algorithms set market prices (as opposed to order books, which match bids and asks on a centralized exchange like Coinbase) .
You can connect your crypto wallet to Uniswap at https://app.uniswap.org/
By supplying tokens to Uniswap liquidity pools, users can earn rewards while enabling peer-to-peer trading.
Anyone, anywhere, can supply tokens to liquidity pools, trade tokens, or even create and list their own tokens (using Ethereum’s ERC-20 protocol).
There are currently hundreds of tokens available on Uniswap, and some of the most popular trading pairs are stablecoins like USDC and Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
One issue users of Ethereum-based apps like Uniswap face are transaction fees (also called gas) that can vary widely in price and can make it expensive to use the network. Multiple solutions to this issue are in the works, from the long-planned transition to the ETH2 blockchain (scheduled for sometime in 2022) to the nearer-term rollout of a “Layer 2” scaling solution called Optimism later this year. Uniswap developers are confident that Optimism will allow for significantly cheaper Uniswap transactions.
In early May 2021, Uniswap v3 launched with the goal of making transactions faster and cheaper.
DEXs have a range of risks, so do your research. “Impermanent loss” can result from pairing a more volatile cryptocurrency with a less volatile one in a liquidity pool. Bugs in smart contracts can be exploited. And anyone can create a token, so watch out for “rug pulls.”
Uniswap creator Hayden Adams and two Paradigm developers have sketched out a way to make large Ethereum trades on a DEX. The post Uniswap creator, Paradigm devs are building a way to improve large Ethereum trades in DeFi appeared first on The Block.
Grayscale Investments is enabling its investors to get exposure to and track DeFi assets like uniswap and aave. The post Grayscale is launching an institutional-grade DeFi fund and index appeared first on The Block.
The Ethereum Name Service, which lets users associate complex addresses with human readable names, has grown rapidly in the last few months. The post Ethereum Name Service grows by 10,700 addresses in June, now attached to $277 million appeared first on The Block.
A political lobby group run by Harvard’s blockchain and fintech initiative sold half of the funding it received from Uniswap within days. The post Harvard Law’s blockchain initiative sells half of $20 million grant from Uniswap DAO appeared first on The Block.
Uniswap V3 smart contracts are now live on Optimism Ethereum, albeit in an early alpha form.
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