The decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has launched its token, UNI. A few minutes after 8:00 pm ET on Wednesday, Uniswap automatically allocated 400 UNI tokens to any wallet address that had interacted with the protocol before September 1; It issued over 66 million UNI tokens, claimed in under 24 hours.
According to a Uniswap blog, it will allocate 60% of the new UNI tokens to its community members while team members, employees, investors, and advisors get the remaining 40%.
UNI Already Booming in the DeFi Sector
Already, Uniswap’s token is one of the most held digital assets in DeFi. Uniswap is one of the original developers of new trading platforms that use smart contract-based liquidity pools to spot prices and facilitate trades, known as swaps.
A governance token such as UNI is a digital asset that allows its holders to vote on decisions that affect the protocol’s future to which it corresponds. They can also use these governance tokens to earn interest through a liquidity mining scheme known as yield farming. Specifically, earnings from liquidity mining contribute to $9 billion in the DeFi sector.
According to Dune Analytics, Uniswap already processed nearly $10 billion in token swap volume this month. UNI token launch will bring distributed governance to the undisputed leader in decentralized exchanges and has captured more than 60% of DEX volume over the past seven days.
Uniswap Future Launches and Plans
Uniswap states that it is now well-positioned for community-led growth, development, and self-sustainability. UNI (ERC-20) introduction serves to enable shared community ownership and a vibrant, diverse, and dedicated governance system, which can actively guide the longer term protocol.
A Uniswap blog post stated that team members would not participate directly in governance for the foreseeable future.Team members could delegate votes to protocol delegates, and every one UNI holder will have ownership of the governance process. Tokens dedicated to employees, advisors, and investors have a four-year vesting schedule.
On September 18, Uniswap will launch a liquidity mining program targeting USDT, USDC, DAI, and wBTC pools. Community governance will activate on October 17 after a one month grace period, after which collections containing different tokens can get nominated to receive UNI rewards. The UNI launch had a more significant impact, though, maybe in helping set the standard for governance token releases in the increasingly fractured DeFi marketplace.
Sushiswap Competition Against Uniswap
Recently, Sushiswap migrated over $800 million of crypto assets from its rival. When compared, both automate market markers(AMMs), the newer SushiSwap is more decentralized.
Sushiswap launched a token to enable liquid mining and allow its users to load up on assets before the migration to maximize rewards when Sushiswap went fully live.
