Swap UNI at the Best Rate

What is UNI?

UNI is an ERC-20 token that carries voting power over the Uniswap Protocol rather than a claim on its cash flows. One UNI is one vote, and a vote only counts once the token has been delegated, either to its own holder or to another address. UNI is not equity in Uniswap Labs, the company that writes most of the protocol's code.

The protocol it governs is a set of automated market maker contracts: anyone can pool two tokens, and anyone can trade against that pool. UNI voters control the parameters around those contracts, including the protocol fee, the networks the contracts are deployed to, and the treasury that funds work on them.

How UNI works

Uniswap governance runs in three stages. A temperature check on the governance forum gauges support, a five-day Snapshot vote records off-chain sentiment, and a binding on-chain vote executes through a Governor Bravo contract behind a timelock. At launch the parameters were 1% of the UNI supply delegated to submit an on-chain proposal, a 4% quorum, and a seven-day voting period; the quorum is currently 40 million UNI.

Because the final vote executes code, a passing proposal changes protocol contracts directly, including deployments on other networks reached through their canonical bridges. Delegates who do not vote withhold their weight, so turnout rather than opposition is what usually decides whether a Uniswap proposal takes effect.

UNI supply and tokenomics

One billion UNI were minted at genesis on 16 September 2020 and released across four years: 60% to community members, 21.51% to team members and employees, 17.8% to investors and 0.69% to advisors, with the last three tranches vesting over that period. A perpetual 2% annual inflation was designed to begin once the four-year schedule ended.

Since December 2025 supply also moves the other way. The UNIfication proposal, which passed with 99.9% support, switched on protocol fees and routes them into a mechanism that burns UNI, and it approved a retroactive burn of 100 million UNI from the treasury. Fees accumulate in per-chain jars, and searchers claim them by burning UNI.

Who builds UNI

Uniswap Labs, founded by Hayden Adams in 2018, builds the protocol contracts and the best-known web interface. The Uniswap Foundation, funded by a governance vote in 2022, supports grants, delegates and governance operations. Neither organization controls the protocol by itself: changing a deployed contract takes an on-chain UNI vote.

UNIfication was proposed jointly by Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation, and it restated that division of work. Labs concentrates on protocol development and growth, while protocol usage drives the UNI burn.

How UNI is governed

Everything that touches the deployed protocol goes through UNI holders: switching protocol fees on or off, setting fee levels per protocol version and network, deploying to a new chain, and spending the treasury. After UNIfication, governance approved an expedited path for fee-parameter proposals, which skip the request-for-comment stage and go straight to Snapshot and an on-chain vote.

Voting weight is concentrated in a small set of large delegates, and proposals regularly expire on turnout rather than losing a vote. Check a proposal's live status on the Uniswap forum or Tally before treating an outcome as settled.

What people use UNI for

In practice UNI is held for governance weight, used to pay into the burn mechanism, or paired in liquidity pools. Delegation is the part most holders touch: voting power can be assigned without giving up custody of the token.

• Delegate voting weight to a governance representative while keeping the token in your own wallet.
• Self-delegate and vote directly on Uniswap proposals.
• Burn UNI as a searcher to claim protocol fees accumulated in a chain's fee jar.
• Supply UNI to a pool such as UNI to WETH or UNI to USDC.

UNI risks and considerations

UNI gives no claim on Uniswap Labs and no contractual right to protocol revenue. The burn mechanism exists because governance voted for it, and governance can vote to change it. Voting weight is concentrated, the 40 million UNI quorum is hard to reach, and a proposal that wins its Snapshot can still expire on-chain.

Tokens named UNI on other networks are bridged or issuer-pegged representations rather than the Ethereum token, so what backs them depends on that bridge or issuer. Confirm the contract address for the network you are swapping on before you trade.