Uniswap

In November 2018, Hayden Adams released Uniswap V1 on Ethereum mainnet, pioneering the AMM model.

In May 2020, Uniswap V2 launched, supporting arbitrary ERC-20 pairs and flash swaps.

In September 2020, Uniswap issued the UNI governance token and airdropped 400 tokens to early users.

In May 2021, Uniswap V3 introduced concentrated liquidity, boosting capital efficiency up to 4000x versus V2.

In 2023, the Uniswap Foundation published its V4 roadmap, proposing a Hook-based programmable liquidity architecture.

On April 10, 2024, Uniswap Labs received an SEC Wells notice alleging it ran an unregistered exchange.

In February 2025, the SEC closed its investigation into Uniswap, easing regulatory pressure.

On February 13, 2025, Uniswap's own L2, Unichain, went live, extending it into a blockchain operator.

In 2025, Uniswap V4 launched with Hooks to advance programmable liquidity.

Fee switch rollout: Proposal 100 was executed on July 27, extending v4 protocol fees to seven networks - Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Polygon, OP Mainnet and Robinhood Chain - at roughly $325,000 per day; September protocol revenue hit $14.81 million, a record since activation, with Robinhood Chain contributing 53%.

Burn expansion: Fees expanded to 11 additional chains on September 18, and Proposal 102 passed unanimously with 46.26 million votes for on October 5, extending fee collection and burn infrastructure to Circle's Arc chain. Collected fees flow into TokenJar contracts that require burning UNI to claim, closing the loop between trading activity and supply reduction.

In December 2025 the UNIfication proposal passed with 99.9% support, switching on the protocol fee and burning 100 million UNI in one go; in July 2026 governance proposal 100 extended fees to v4 pools on seven chains, lifting daily protocol revenue from about $114,000 to $325,000. Protocol fees from January to July totalled $28.2 million, including $5.3 million in June alone.

On September 12 the protocol reported $71.1 billion in 30-day volume, more than the next three DEXs combined, with v4 contributing about $38 billion and v3 about $32 billion; it spans more than 40 chains, and on September 13 Uniswap accounted for roughly $262 million of the $1.35 billion in DEX volume on Robinhood Chain. In September it deployed to Circle's Arc mainnet across protocol, web app, wallet and API. Unichain has been subdued, generating only $5,000 to $7,000 in monthly revenue.

Uniswap's Future strategy and roadmap: A year after the fee switch, Uniswap's revenue center of gravity is no longer Ethereum retail swaps: Robinhood Chain contributed $90.2 billion in cumulative volume in roughly three months, more than Unichain managed in twenty, becoming the largest new fee source. Mechanically it chose burns over dividends - fees land in TokenJar and can only be redeemed by burning UNI through Firepit, limiting securities exposure - while UNI is also designed as the staking asset for Unichain's planned validation network. Institutions arrive via BUIDL on UniswapX and the SMBC Nikko and Nethermind v4-hook gateway for Japan; Unichain's TVL fell 86% after incentives faded and its differentiation is still unresolved. The risk is that fees still hinge on volume across a few chains, so a Robinhood Chain cooldown shrinks burns with it.

Uniswap was created by Hayden Adams, who grew up on Long Island, studied mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University and worked at Siemens on turbines before leaving to teach himself Solidity. In 2018 he built the first version of the protocol from a Vitalik Buterin post on automated market making. He has been CEO of Uniswap Labs ever since, owning protocol research and the front-end team.

The Uniswap Foundation runs on a separate track. Executive director Devin Walsh came out of the a16z crypto fund and has handled grant review, governance and developer education since the foundation was set up in 2023. General counsel Robert Pratt deals with regulatory contact and litigation. Former president and COO Mary-Catherine Lader, previously at BlackRock, left in 2025 to start Native Markets, and her operating remit was split between Labs' engineering and people leads. Engineering is in three groups, protocol, mobile and onchain data, each with a lead.

Uniswap has seen multiple key departures recently: Head of Growth Sarina Siddhanti (Mar 2026), Head of Finance Justin Wong (Mar 2026), Business Development Eli Engelman (Jul 2026), Content Lead Chase Chapman (Jul 2026), APAC Growth Manager Sean Kim (Apr 2026), and Staff Frontend Engineer Philip London (Aug 2026).

Uniswap v3 offers four fee tiers of 0.01%, 0.05%, 0.30% and 1.00%, while Uniswap v2 applies a flat 0.30% across all pools. Protocol fees take roughly 1/6: 0.05% on v2, and 0.0025%, 0.0125%, 0.05% and 0.1666% across the four v3 tiers, leaving LPs 0.25%, 0.0075%, 0.0375%, 0.25% and 0.8334%. Uniswap v4 lets pool creators set fees from 0% to 100% in 0.0001% increments.