- On April 5, Uniswap’s total trading volume surpassed $2 trillion.
- Over the weekend, Uniswap daily volumes increased and consistently crossed the $3 billion mark.
April is turning out to be Uniswap UNI -8.088% a month to remember.
To begin with, on April 5, the decentralized exchange giant’s total trading volume surpassed $2 trillion, confirming its position as a significant DEX participant as competition intensifies across networks, especially on Solana, where Uniswap is not present.
On a less positive one, the Securities and Exchange Commission served the platform with a Wells notice on April 10, which many took to mean that a battle on DeFi was about to break out.
The SEC’s pursuit of cryptocurrency is not new, but historically, the agency has mostly pursued high-profile investigations targeting centralized firms.
In a way, Uniswap is an unusual example. Apprehensions about strict regulatory action have caused some cryptocurrency platforms to retreat from serving US customers.
Conversely, Uniswap does not partake in the practice of blocking users with a U.S. IP address by some DeFi platform frontends (however some users manage to get around this by using a VPN). There are other ways to interface with DeFi protocols than frontends, which are usually the most user-friendly.
As far as Uniswap Labs is concerned, it is only running a website that provides users with access to the Uniswap protocol, which is just a collection of smart contracts. Given its market dominance, this does make Uniswap an ideal target for the SEC.
The cryptocurrency community has shown its support online, with many highlighting the importance of the battle. Hayden Adams, the founder of Uniswap, stated on X that he is “just annoyed, disappointed, and ready to fight,” rather than shocked.
This is just the beginning of a very long war. Even more than a year after Coinbase received its Wells notice in March 2023, not much has changed.
Price action at UNI
The Uniswap governance token, or UNI, saw a little decline in value following the announcement, falling from above $11 to just under $9. But in late February, UNI received a lift from a proposal to compensate token holders, and as of Friday, the token was still up 23% year-to-date. But UNI fell even more as a result of the weekend market catastrophe.
Uniswap appears to be gaining popularity as well; throughout the weekend, daily volumes increased and continued to surpass $3 billion.
Not because of increasing usage, but rather around the end of last week, the fees collected by the exchange’s frontend also surged dramatically. Six months after adding a 0.15% fee to some swaps through its web interface, Uniswap Labs increased that amount to 0.25%.
With little fanfare, the adjustment appeared to take effect shortly after Uniswap verified its Wells notice. It’s probable that the higher costs will support Uniswap Labs’ financial position prior to their legal dispute. Within a day of the move, the interface brought in over $500,000 in income on Ethereum alone.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
