Uniswap locked value has exceeded US$2 billion, and UNI daily trading volume has reached US$4.7 billion

According to Debank data, Uniswap's locked value exceeded US$2 billion, with a 24-hour increase of 44%, breaking a new milestone.

According to CoinGecko, UNI’s 24-hour trading volume is $4.7 billion, behind only Tether ($38.9 billion), Bitcoin ($20.7 billion), and Ethereum ($12.7 billion). This means that Uniswap has not only established its leadership among DeFi platforms, but is now at least starting to race against established operators in all cryptocurrencies.

UNI transaction volume on September 18th | Source: CoinGecko

UNI is a new “governance” token launched by decentralized exchange Uniswap on Wednesday in response to competitor/clone SushiSwap. SushiSwap followed Uniswap’s lead but added the added benefit of distributing its own SUSHI tokens to reward network users. While these governance tokens are ostensibly meant to grant governance privileges to liquidity providers, such tokens have become valuable commodities in their own right. Now that Uniswap has launched its own governance token and started liquidity mining, it can be said that imitators such as SushiSwap no longer have an advantage. Uniswap once again proved that “old ginger is spicy”. Just one day after launching liquidity mining, Uniswap’s locked value has now exceeded $2 billion, setting a new record for locked value in DeFi.

It is certain that as the most widely used DEX, Uniswap immediately attracted huge traffic after announcing the issuance of the governance token UNI. More importantly, Uniswap announced that it would airdrop 400 UNI to each user who had used the platform before September 1, which led many holders to start trading UNI. At the same time, there were a large number of sellers, which jointly pushed up the price of UNI. UNI broke through $8.7 yesterday, with a single-day increase of more than 100%.

Although UNI is a token issued by a DEX, it has been sought after by CEXs. After Uniswap announced the issuance of UNI, Coinbase announced that it would launch UNI trading on the same day, which can be said to have refreshed Coinbase's coin listing speed record. In addition, Binance, Huobi and OKEx also announced the launch of UNI trading on the same day. Various other exchanges followed suit and launched various reward activities to attract investors to trade.

Despite this, UNI's trading volume is second only to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether, but its market value is far behind the three. According to DeFimarketcap data, UNI's market value is $465 million, with a circulation of 65 million (a total of 1 billion in the first four years), ranking 11th in the DeFi rankings, far behind other competitors Maker ($1.02 billion), YFI ($930 million), and Lend ($790 million). However, this ranking will be temporary, and as more UNI circulates, its market value will rise sharply.

Source: DeFimarketcap

Some other numbers also prove this point. Although Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether also rank in the top three in terms of market capitalization, UNI's market capitalization is $654 million, enough to rank in the top 40 behind DeFi competitors yearn.finance, Aave and Dai.

Uniswap’s decision to issue a governance token has undoubtedly shaken up the young DeFi landscape, but it’s too early to determine whether UNI is a passing fad or a permanent resident in the crypto top tier.