Uniswap Labs Finally Launches Its Ethereum-based Blockchain Unichain After Cancelling Planned Fee Switch Vote in May

Uniswap's UNI token rose 10% Thursday after parent company Uniswap Labs announced it would launch its own Ethereum-based blockchain, also known as a rollup.

Uniswap Labs, the company behind the popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, has announced the launch of its own Ethereum-based blockchain, known as a rollup.

The new blockchain, called Unichain, will share its revenue with users who choose to lock up, or “stake,” their UNI tokens. This marks a significant development in the long-running discussion over whether Uniswap should allocate a portion of its revenue to UNI holders.

Uniswap is currently the seventh-largest protocol in decentralized finance (DeFi) by user deposits, with nearly $4.5 billion locked in the protocol, according to data from DefiLlama. Since its launch almost six years ago, Uniswap has collected more than $3.8 billion in fees.

UNI is the governance token of the Uniswap protocol, which gives its holders limited control over the protocol’s features and development. On Thursday, nearly 400,000 crypto wallets held UNI, according to Etherscan.

For years, UNI holders have pushed for a cut of Uniswap's revenue. A recent proposal would have seen a portion of Uniswap's fees diverted to UNI holders who “delegated” their tokens for use in protocol governance.

This process, known as delegation, sees users loan the voting rights attached to their governance tokens – typically to subject matter experts.

But in May, the Uniswap Foundation, a nonprofit tasked with supporting the Uniswap protocol, canceled a planned vote on the fee switch on the day voting was set to begin.

The foundation's governance lead, Erin Koen, said an unnamed stakeholder had raised an issue that required “additional due diligence on our end” but did not specify what the issue was.

The foundation has not commented on the matter since then. When contacted by DL News on Thursday, Uniswap Executive Director Devin Walsh did not immediately return a request for comment.

Unichain will use a distributed network of computers called “validators” to process transactions, in a manner similar to the Ethereum blockchain itself.

To become a validator on Unichain, users will have to stake their UNI in exchange for rewards, according to Uniswap delegates who spoke to DL News. However, this staking mechanism will not serve as a replacement for the fee switch.

“Unichain is a positive step forward for Uniswap and the DeFi ecosystem,” said Alice Corsini, a governance analyst at Uniswap delegate Karpatkey.

“While we're still getting into the mechanics of it, we see Unichain's model as an effort to reward an active set of validators, compared to the fee switch discussion, which targeted the community at large.”

Atis Elsts, a researcher and Uniswap delegate, concurred with this assessment.

“I'm happy to see that the UNI token finally gets some utility outside of governance itself,” said Elsts. But it isn't a replacement for the fee switch, he added.

“Unless the DAO votes for permanently disabling the fee switch on some deployments, that option will remain there forever, since blockchain contracts are immutable.”

Unichain went live on an Ethereum test network on Thursday, with a final version set to be deployed to Ethereum's main network by the end of the year, according to the Uniswap Foundation.

The above is the detailed content of Uniswap Labs Finally Launches Its Ethereum-based Blockchain Unichain After Cancelling Planned Fee Switch Vote in May. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!