Uniswap burns 100M tokens as ‘UNIfication’ upgrade sends UNI soaring

Uniswap has announced that its fee-burning “UNIfication” upgrade is live onchain. The upgrade has led to the burning of 100 million UNI tokens from its treasury, resulting in a surge in UNI’s price.

Uniswap, an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange (DEX), has burned 100 million UNI tokens from its treasury, valued at $635 million. The token burn comes after the protocol’s fee-burning “UNIfication” upgrade went live on mainnet. 

According to data from the Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan, the burn took place on December 28 at approximately 4:30 AM UTC. The burning transaction marks the first large-scale burn on the ecosystem after the fee-burning proposal passed in a record governance vote. 

Uniswap’s ‘UNIfication’ upgrade goes live

The proposal received near-unanimous support from its community, clearing the 40 million vote requirement. According to data from the Uniswap Foundation, the proposal received over 125 million votes, with only 742 opposing votes.

UNI has surged by 5.4% in the 24 hours, marking a swift recovery from a 12% decline recorded in the last seven days. Data from crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap shows that the digital asset is up 30% since December 18, after nearly a month of a sell-off, and is currently trading for $6.34. 

In November, the proposal’s hype propelled UNI’s price by more than 70% in a single week, accompanied by a surge in whale activity on the protocol that reached a four-year high. According to data from Santiment, Uniswap had the highest number of new wallets created in three years, and daily whale transactions reached a four-year high.

Cryptopolitan previously reported that the proposal’s implementation will ultimately tighten UNI’s supply and add long-term value to community members and supporters. The report highlighted that UNI’s supply in circulation would drop from 629 million to 529 million tokens after the burn. 

The proposal aims to transform Uniswap into a yield-generating ecosystem by implementing protocol fees and utilizing the proceeds to burn UNI. The upgrade will activate Uniswap’s v2 and v3 fee switches on the Unichain mainnet, imposing v2 pool fees of 0.25% for LPs and 0.05% for the protocol itself. Additionally, v3 protocol fees will be applied pool by pool, resulting in 16–25% of LP fees at each tier.

The proposal also aims to incorporate Unichain sequencer fees into its burning ecosystem and develop protocol fee discount auctions to increase LP returns while allowing the protocol to internalize MEV. 

According to the proposal, the upgrade will roll out aggregator hooks to turn Uniswap v4 into an onchain aggregator that collects fees on external liquidity. The upgrade will also involve migrating governance-owned Unisocks liquidity from Uniswap v1 on mainnet to v4 on Unichain and burning the LP position.

Uniswap rolls out Continuous Clearing Auctions (CCA) to streamline token offerings

The news follows Uniswap’s partnership with Aztec, a privacy-native Layer 2 on Ethereum, to introduce Continuous Clearing Auctions in mid-November, streamlining token offerings on its exchange platform. Cryptopolitan recently highlighted that the CCA protocol will roll out a decentralized platform for developers to bootstrap liquidity on Uniswap v4 automatically. 

The report detailed that the tool is among the several tools that Uniswap developers are working on to provide deeper liquidity for token launches on the Uniswap platform. Aztec was the first DeFi project to debut through the CCA protocol. To use the protocol, project developers need to declare the number of tokens to sell, a starting price, and a timeframe for the sale. 

Auction users will place bids and specify a maximum price and total spend. The bids can only be withdrawn once prices fall outside the predetermined range. However, the auction participants can place as many bids as they want throughout the token offering.

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