Uniswap is the world’s leading decentralized exchange (DEX) and a foundational product in the DeFi ecosystem, enabling peer-to-peer trading of cryptocurrencies without the need for a centralized intermediary. Instead of using traditional order books, Uniswap relies on automated market maker (AMM) smart contracts to create liquidity pools, where users can swap tokens directly on-chain.

Since launching in 2018 on Ethereum, Uniswap has undergone several major upgrades—each improving efficiency, flexibility, and capital performance. Its native protocol is open-source, fully non-custodial, and widely integrated across DeFi applications.

Key Innovations: Uniswap v2 introduced token-to-token swaps and price oracles.

Uniswap v3 added concentrated liquidity, allowing liquidity providers (LPs) to choose custom price ranges and optimize capital efficiency.

Uniswap v4 (currently in development/testing as of 2025) introduces the most advanced architecture yet. It includes:

Hooks – customizable smart contract extensions that let developers modify or augment pool behavior (e.g., implement dynamic fees or on-chain limit orders).

Singleton Architecture – reduces gas costs by consolidating all liquidity pools into a single contract.

Native ETH Support – eliminates the need to wrap ETH into WETH for swaps.

Improved gas efficiency and more flexible fee tiers.

Uniswap v4 aims to make the protocol more modular and developer-friendly, enabling a new wave of custom AMMs and DeFi applications to be built on top of it.

Uniswap supports multiple blockchains beyond Ethereum, including Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Base, and others—helping it remain one of the most widely used protocols in DeFi.

With billions in daily trading volume, Uniswap remains a core infrastructure layer for the decentralized economy, trusted by users, DAOs, and developers worldwide.