Uniswap DEX Launches UNI Governance Token

Uniswap, the decentralized exchange platform, has launched its own governance token called UNI. The on-chain market maker has minted 1 billion coins which will be released to the public over the next four years.

According to the Uniswap blog on Sept 16, the new tokens called UNI will be allocated to community members, team members and employees, investors, and advisors at a ratio of 60%, 21.51%, 17.8%, and 0.69% respectively.

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange in the form of two smart contracts hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, as well as a public, open-source front-end client. In less than two years, the Uniswap protocol has made major strides—supporting over $20 billion in volume and traded by over 250,000 unique addresses across 8,484 unique assets. Uniswap has also emerged as foundational DeFi infrastructure, with integrations across hundreds of interfaces and applications.

As a highly decentralized financial infrastructure with a platform that has thrived independently, Uniswap states it is now particularly well-positioned for community-led growth, development, and self-sustainability. The introduction of UNI (ERC-20) serves this purpose, enabling shared community ownership and a vibrant, diverse, and dedicated governance system, which will actively guide the protocol towards the future.

Per the Blog:

“UNI officially enshrines Uniswap as publicly-owned and self-sustainable infrastructure while continuing to carefully protect its indestructible and autonomous qualities.”

Uniswap states it will launch a liquidity mining program on Sept. 18, targeting its USDT, USDC, DAI, and wBTC pools.

In terms of governance of the UNI token—all Uni holders will have ownership of the governance process. Uniswap’s blog post said that team members will not participate directly in governance for the “foreseeable future,” but noted that team members could delegate votes to protocol delegates, and all UNI holders will have ownership of the governance process. Additionally, all Uni tokens dedicated to employees, investors, and advisors have a four-year vesting schedule.