UNI

Uniswap

DeFi

The largest DEX finally routes fees to its token through burns, but a big growth budget offsets part of it.

Value accrual, unproven v1.1 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

The fee switch that UNI holders waited five years for is live: UNIfication passed in Dec 2025, 100M UNI was burned, and protocol fees from more chains and v4 now buy and burn UNI. UNI is up +17% over a year while BTC and ETH fell, but the path was violent: −75% to $2.40 in June, then a 4x run to $10.22 in September on Robinhood Chain volume and CME futures news. The open question is whether recurring burns, ~$119M a year at the post-July pace, can stay above the 20M UNI a year growth budget and survive weaker DEX volume.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$7.44
+1.8% 24h · −15% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$4.65B
rank #25 · FDV $6.60B
24h volume
$410.7M
8.8% of market cap
From ATH
−83%
ATH $44.92, May 2021
2026 YTD
+32%
$5.64 → $7.44
UNI burned
~113M
100M one-off + ~13M from fees

The last 12 months

$5$10$15Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNov2025-11-11: $9.4116$9.412026-06-11: $2.395$2.40 low2026-09-23: $10.2187$10.22 peak2026-10-20: $7.439$7.441UNIfication proposed2100M UNI burned3Bitwise files UNI ETF4Year low at $2.405Robinhood Chain goes live6Fee switch expands7Burn tops $250M a year8CME announces UNI futures9CME UNI futures trade10Unichain to OP Enterprise11CLARITY Act lame-duck push
GovernanceTokenomicsMarketAdoptionUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026.

Key events
  1. 1
    10 Nov 25 UNIfication proposed. Labs and the Foundation propose the fee switch, a 100M UNI burn and a 20M UNI a year growth budget; UNI jumps to $9.41 the next day.
  2. 2
    28 Dec 25 100M UNI burned. Vote passes with ~99.9% support; 100M UNI (~$596M) is burned and protocol fees start buying and burning UNI.
  3. 3
    05 Feb 26 Bitwise files UNI ETF. First spot Uniswap ETF S-1 with Coinbase custody; UNI still falls to ~$3.30 the next day.
  4. 4
    11 Jun 26 Year low at $2.40. Daily close of $2.40, −75% from the November spike, as DEX volume and alts slump.
  5. 5
    30 Jun 26 Robinhood Chain goes live. Uniswap deployments pass $6B in swap volume within ten days of launch.
  6. 6
    27 Jul 26 Fee switch expands. Governance adds v4 and Robinhood Chain fees; burns rise to ~$325k a day.
  7. 7
    08 Sep 26 Burn tops $250M a year. Hayden Adams says the trailing 7-day burn pace passed $250M a year.
  8. 8
    22 Sep 26 CME announces UNI futures. UNI closes at its 12-month high of $10.22 the next day.
  9. 9
    19 Oct 26 CME UNI futures trade. First DEX token on CME; UNI fell ~21% in the two weeks before launch.
  10. 10
    29 Oct 26 Unichain to OP Enterprise. Optimism takes over Unichain sequencing and RPC; contracts and balances unchanged.
  11. 11
    Nov 26 CLARITY Act lame-duck push. Stalled after a 49 to 50 Senate vote on 15 Sep; any DeFi carve-out now waits for after the 3 Nov midterms.

How a swap on Uniswap ends up burning UNI

Trader
Swaps ETH for USDC

In the Uniswap app, a wallet or an aggregator, on Ethereum, Unichain or another chain.

Pool (v3 or v4)
Trade fills against liquidity

Pays the pool fee, e.g. 0.30%; v4 hooks can change fees or logic.

Liquidity providers
Earn most of the fee

The larger part of each fee stays with LPs, as before.

TokenJar
Protocol share is set aside

Roughly a sixth of the fee (pool-dependent) collects in TokenJar as ETH, USDC and other tokens.

Searcher
Buys and burns UNI

Sends UNI of equal value to Firepit, which burns it, and claims the fee tokens.

UNI holders
Supply shrinks

No payout; value comes from fewer UNI, offset by growth-budget releases.

Where UNI comes in: the trader never touches UNI. UNI is only used at the end, burned by searchers to unlock the protocol's fee share, plus Unichain net sequencer fees. Pools without protocol fees, competing DEXs and forks bypass UNI entirely, which is why fee coverage and volume decide how much is burned.

Usage and adoption

USD per year: UNI burned from protocol fees vs UNI released by the growth budget
Fee burn, Feb to Jun 2026 avg
~$49M
Fee burn after 27 Jul expansion
~$119M
Peak 7-day run rate (8 Sep)
$250M+
Growth budget, 20M UNI
~$149M

Burn: Uniswap Labs reported monthly protocol fees of $3.1M (Feb) to $5.1M (Jun), ~$4.1M a month on average; after v4 and Robinhood Chain fees were added on 27 Jul, ~$325k a day went to burns (Phemex); Hayden Adams said the trailing 7-day pace topped $250M a year on 8 Sep, a short peak, not a run rate to bank on. Growth budget: 20M UNI a year valued at today's $7.44. In tokens, ~13M UNI has been burned from fees since Dec 2025 (derived from CoinGecko total supply), against 20M UNI a year of budget.

  • strong signal
    Protocol fees burned
    ~$119M / yr

    Post-27 Jul pace (~$325k a day). Real trading fees turned into UNI demand; swings with volume.

  • strong signal
    Spot DEX volume
    $87.5B / 30d

    DefiLlama, 6 Oct 2026. ~3x PancakeSwap; about a third of all DEX volume.

  • medium signal
    LP trading fees
    ~$298M

    Jan to Jul 2026; ~$28M of it reached the protocol (Stobox). Most fees still go to liquidity providers.

  • medium signal
    UNI burned to date
    ~113M UNI

    CoinGecko total supply 886.9M vs 1B minted: 100M one-off plus ~13M from fees since Dec 2025.

Uniswap's usage is real and leading: it earns trading fees every day. Since the fee switch, part of those fees now burns UNI. The scoreboard is burn vs growth budget: at the post-July pace burns are slightly below the 20M UNI budget in dollars, and only a busy market like September pushes them clearly above it.

Project

What it is
The largest decentralised exchange: automated market-maker pools (v2, v3 and v4) on Ethereum and many other chains, plus its own L2, Unichain. UNI is the governance token, and since Dec 2025 protocol fees are used to buy and burn it.
Team
Founded by Hayden Adams in 2018. After UNIfication, Uniswap Labs absorbed most Foundation teams and builds the protocol, apps and Unichain; Labs dropped its own interface fee.
Technology
v4 (Jan 2025) puts all pools in one contract and adds hooks: custom code for fees, liquidity and launches. Unichain is an OP Stack rollup and moves to OP Enterprise (Optimism runs sequencing) on 29 Oct.
Traction
$87.5B spot volume in 30 days to 6 Oct 2026 (DefiLlama), ~3x PancakeSwap and about a third of all DEX volume. Robinhood Chain deployments passed $6B volume within ten days of launch in July.
Competitors
PancakeSwap (BNB Chain, second by volume), Aerodrome (Base), Curve and Fluid for stables, Hyperliquid and CEXs for active traders, and aggregators that route around any single venue.
Key risks
Burns depend on volatile volume and on fee tiers that LPs and competitors can undercut; the treasury growth budget adds supply; bugs in third-party hooks; the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate on 15 Sep, so US DeFi rules remain unsettled.
Roadmap
Unichain to OP Enterprise on 29 Oct 2026, then native OP Stack interop (no date); Protocol Fee Discount Auctions and aggregator features funded by the growth budget; Bitwise spot UNI ETF filed Feb 2026, no SEC decision yet; CME futures went live on 19 Oct.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
UNI
+17%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

UNI beat BTC and ETH by a wide margin over 12 months, almost all of it from the Aug to Sep rally. Over 3 years it is up roughly +77% (from ~$4.2 in Oct 2023, researched by hand and approximate), behind BTC (~+179%) but ahead of ETH (~+53%); 3-year figures are manual because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$2.40 low (11 Jun) to $10.22 high (23 Sep), daily closes; now $7.44, +32% YTD
12-month drawdown
−75%, from $9.41 (11 Nov 2025) to $2.40 (11 Jun 2026); now −27% below the Sep high
Liquidity
$411M traded in 24h, 8.8% of market cap; rank #25
Relative strength
+17% in a year vs BTC −25% and ETH −39%; but −15% in 30 days as the CME futures launch became a sell-the-news event
ATH check ATH check passed. The $44.92 high (2 May 2021) came about eight months after the Sep 2020 launch, outside the 90-day window, so it stays the reference; UNI is −83% below it.

Tokenomics

Supply
1B UNI minted at launch (Sep 2020); total now ~886.9M after burns, ~624.7M circulating. The ~262M gap is mostly the governance treasury.
Inflation/emissions
Governance may mint up to 2% a year since Sep 2024 but has not used it. Real new float comes from the treasury: UNIfication set a growth budget of 20M UNI a year from 2026, paid quarterly to Labs (~$149M a year at today's price).
Unlocks/vesting
Team and investor vesting ended in 2024. Remaining releases are treasury grants and the growth budget, decided by governance votes.
Utility
Governance votes, and the only asset that can release the fees held in TokenJar: searchers burn UNI through Firepit to claim them. No staking yield and no direct fee payout.
Concentration
The treasury is the largest holder; Labs and early team wallets hold large stakes. Votes pass with ~125M UNI of turnout, so a few delegates decide outcomes.
Sinks
100M UNI one-off burn (28 Dec 2025, $596M) plus recurring fee burns of ~13M UNI so far; a Bitwise spot ETF is filed but not approved.

Bull case

DEX volume stays near $85B a month, Robinhood Chain and tokenized stocks keep growing, and burns run above $150M a year, so UNI's net supply falls even after the growth budget. CME futures and a Bitwise ETF approval bring institutional demand; price reclaims $9 and retests the $10.22 September high.

Bear case

Volume cools after the September burst, burns slip back toward the ~$49M a year of early 2026, and the 20M UNI budget plus treasury grants outrun them. Futures make it easier to short; price loses $7 and falls back toward the $3.90 to $4.30 range of August.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Weekly UNI burned (Firepit) vs the quarterly growth-budget release
  • Uniswap share of DEX volume vs PancakeSwap and Aerodrome
  • Unichain move to OP Enterprise on 29 Oct and its sequencer fees
  • $7 support and the $10.22 Sep high; SEC on the Bitwise UNI ETF

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

UNI against EUR · USD · BTC · ETH

24h $6.33M · ±2% depth $1.04M

OKXlisted

UNI against EUR · USDT · USDC · TRY

24h $18.9M · ±2% depth $748.3k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BinanceUNI/USDT$55.1M$1.39M
KuCoinUNI/USDT$28.1M$276.4k
GateUNI/USDT$20.9M$1.10M
OKXUNI/USDT$17.9M$888.5k
CoinbaseUNI/USD$12.3M$1.14M

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
Uniswap V3CLUNI/WETH · Ethereum$3.92M$596.7k
Uniswap V4CLUNI/ETH · Ethereum$1.72M$301.0k
Uniswap V4CLUNI/USDC · Ethereum$968.5k$231.2k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all UNI volume: 1.9%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

Where to follow

Official
People on X
Code and governance
Data
Media