Woke up extremely bullish on DeFi and Ethereum today
Uniswap launched in the 2018 bear, when Ethereum sentiment was at all time lows
Uniswap and other defi projects relentlessly built through that bear market and proved how powerful Ethereum can be, catalyzing defi summer and everything since
Now vibes are down bad again and Uniswap intends to build our way out of it. Last time it was by proving defi is possible. This time it will be by proving defi is inevitable.
The internet brought two disruptive changes: existing businesses moving onto the internet, and the formation of new internet-native businesses
The same duality will exist for defi: the tokenization of all existing assets, and a growing vibrant economy of crypto native assets. And it’s all happening right now, with more and more assets being brought onchain, increasing the value and productivity of crypto native assets.
As this digital economy grows, Defi is being integrated everywhere - payment processors, brokerage accounts, asset issuers. It won't stop until we eat the entire global economy
Uniswap the liquidity layer + Ethereum the settlement layer. The perfect combination of low counterparty risk, permissionless, programmable infrastructure
And all this will result in huge growth in protocol volumes and fee generation. Which reminds me:
UNI burn hit all time highs today, after several new sources of protocol fees came online.
And there are many more to come: v4, uniswap x, aggregator hooks, more chains, etc
Now add in all the new assets coming onchain
We're still at the beginning 🦄
In a few months profits will temporarily flow out of TradFi (cool off phase after IPOs).
People will want to know where to put their money because everything already went up so much.
And there Bitcoin will be, ready to begin the next four year cycle.
Unfortunately, Illia is right. Crypto has such a terrible perception from the outside that AI companies don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole.
Not sure the solution outside of top-tier builders and entrepreneurs like Illia moving to SF and proving people wrong one by one.
The agentic commerce x crypto rails holy matrimony is truly prophetic, but our shit stinks over here.
Something we can all work to improve. Regardless, the convergence will happen imo, just a matter of *when* and how *much* resistance we get.
Onwards.
Today, we are announcing a strategic integration in collaboration with @Securitize, to make @BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) available to trade via UniswapX through Securitize
This is very anti-innovation. DeFi is the most innovation-driven development in finance over the past century.
DeFi provides unprecedented transparency for finance that the old gatekeepers can’t handle.
DeFi will win.
A group named “investors for transparency” are running public ads + lobbying to kill defi, the most transparent financial system on earth
Ironic but unsurprising their site does not disclose who funds them
Deserves a Prometheum style deep dive by the crypto industry
These “revenue” comparisons from Alex are so misleading. It’s worth being precise about how these models actually work
Aero takes 100% of LP fees and rebates them back to LPs via token emissions / liquidity incentives.
In practice, this looks like: “we collect $100m in LP fees and distribute $100m in tokens to LPs based on token voting”
This approach makes revenue numbers look large, but it doesn’t represent sustainable fees. It also puts a heavy thumb on the scale of where LP fees go and makes LP returns dependent on the price of a third token
If Uniswap took 100% of LP fees and rebated them in tokens, reported “fees” would be close to $1B and just as meaningless
Uniswap protocol fees are different by design. A portion of swap fees goes to the protocol, while the majority still goes directly to LPs. The objective is long-term sustainability, not inflated optics
Our proposal starts conservatively, with a roadmap of additional fee sources being enabled over time. This lets the DAO learn each step. The real risk would be turning fees up too aggressively and only learning after liquidity leaves.
Another misleading comparison from Alex is conflating token-emission LP rebates (which are required when all LP fees are taken) with Uniswap’s growth and development budget, which funds engineering, developer grants, and integrations across thousands of products worldwide
As for annual fee burn: it’s too early to project. It’s only been live for a few days, several fee sources aren’t active yet, and volume is still ramping. More importantly, this is a long-term strategy, growth still comes first.
The crypto market will grow massively from here, and Uniswap has the potential to see trillions in daily volume. Capturing that opportunity is the goal
Early signals are solid: liquidity has been stable with fees on, the fee collection system is working smoothly, searcher efficiency is improving, and UNI is being burned daily. This is the start of a new era for Uniswap 🦄