Uniswap completes burn of 100 million UNI…worth $596 million

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) permanently burned 100 million of its own tokens following the passage of a governance proposal. Valued at about $596 million at market prices, it was recorded as one of the largest burns in DeFi protocol history.

On the 27th (local time), Uniswap completed a burn transaction that permanently removed 100 million UNI from the protocol treasury. This was a follow-up to the previously passed fee burn proposal, "UNIfication."

The proposal passed with more than 125 million votes in favor and was approved with an overwhelming 99.9% support rate. There were only 742 votes against. Industry figures including Jesse Walden, founder of Variant; Kain Warwick, founder of Infinex; and Ian Lapham, a former Uniswap Labs engineer, also expressed support.

Uniswap Labs said, "UNIfication has been formally executed on-chain," and added, "The interface fee previously charged by Uniswap Labs has been adjusted to 0, and protocol fees arising from some v3 pools on Uniswap v2 and the Ethereum mainnet have been activated." Fees generated on Unichain will also be used as burn funds after operating costs are deducted.

The market reacted immediately to the large-scale burn. On Binance Tether (in the USDT market), UNI's price rose more than 5% over the past 24 hours, breaking above $6. The burn reduced UNI's circulating supply to about 730 million out of a total supply of 1 billion.

Meanwhile, separate from the burn, the Uniswap Foundation plans to continue supporting ecosystem expansion. The foundation said, "The developer support program will continue without interruption" and "we plan to establish and allocate a 20 million UNI growth budget for ecosystem development and expansion."