Uniswap Burns $596M in UNI After Fee Switch Governance Vote

Uniswap has executed a major token burn following the approval of its long-anticipated fee burning proposal, removing 100 million UNI, worth roughly $596 million at current prices, from the protocol’s treasury.

Onchain data shows the burn transaction was completed at around 4:30 am UTC on Dec. 28, confirming the first large-scale implementation of the governance decision passed earlier this week, according to analyst EmberCN. The transaction permanently reduced Uniswap (UNI)’s token supply, marking one of the largest burns ever carried out by a decentralized finance protocol.

The highly anticipated Uniswap protocol fee switch, dubbed “UNIfication,” passed on Thursday with 99.9% support. More than 125 million UNI tokens were cast in favor of the proposal, compared with just 742 tokens voting against, underscoring broad consensus among token holders.

Several crypto heavyweights with significant voting power backed the UNIfication proposal, including Jesse Waldren, founder and managing partner at crypto-focused venture capital firm Variant; Kain Warwick, the founder of decentralized finance protocols Infinex and Synthetix; and Ian Lapham, who previously worked as an engineer at Uniswap Labs.

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Uniswap Labs confirms 100 million burn

Uniswap Labs confirmed the execution in a post on X, stating that “UNIfication has officially been executed onchain.”

As part of the update, interface fees charged by Uniswap Labs were set to zero, while fees were activated on Uniswap v2 and a selection of v3 pools on Ethereum mainnet. Fees generated by Unichain are also set to flow toward UNI burns after covering Optimism and Layer-1 data costs.

UNI rose more than 5% over the past 24 hours following the burn, with trading volume and market capitalization both increasing, according to CoinMarketCap data. The token’s circulating supply now stands at roughly 730 million UNI, out of a total supply of 1 billion.

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Uniswap Foundation to set aside 20 million UNI for growth

When the proposal was introduced, the Uniswap Foundation said it would continue funding builders and would not stop grant programs that support protocol development. The foundation said helping developers remains a key priority.

To support this plan, the Uniswap Foundation intends to create a Growth Budget that will distribute 20 million UNI tokens to fund development and expansion across the Uniswap ecosystem.

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