Uniswap’s UNI token surges into Top 10 assets

Uniswap is the leading decentralised exchange and this week its native token UNI has surged by 50% ranking UNI as the eighth-largest crypto asset with a $17.7 billion.

According to Cointelegraph, Messari ranks UNI as “ the -second-largest Ethereum-based asset by market cap behind Tether, beating out the Chainlink by nearly 50% of its capitalization.”

The action all happened on 5th March, when during a 24-hour period, UNI became the first DeFi DApp token to enter the Top 10, and Uniswap’s market capitalisation rose from $8.8bn to $14.7bn, according to CoinMarketCap.

The UNI token price “is currently consolidating near yesterday’s all-time high above $34, with the token last trading hands for $33.9,” Cointelegraph says.

Initially UNI tokens were airdropped to liquidity providers, plus a further 400 tokens were distributed to each wallet that interacted with DEX since September 2020. As of this writing, 400 UNI are worth $13.560.

The surge in UNI’s value coincides with a record month for trade volume on the exchange, with February showing four weeks of particularly strong performance. Interest has appeared to slow at the beginning of March, with volume down 25%, but even so, “ Uniswap still represents half of all trade on Ethereum-powered DEXes.”

Interest in Uniswap’s forthcoming upgrade to V3 may also have caused the surge, and there has been an increase in social media activity from Uniswap lead developer, Hayden Adams, could suggest the new version is coming soon. Andre Cronje observed on Twitter, that when founders and core developers suddenly start to increase their tweets, it’s a sign they have reached a milestone and are about to launch something new.