What Is Uniswap? The Protocol, Uniswap Labs and How Swaps Work

Who is behind Uniswap

Three different things share the name, and confusing them causes most misunderstandings about Uniswap.

1. The Uniswap Protocol. Smart contracts deployed on Ethereum and other networks. According to Uniswap's developer documentation, core contracts are non-upgradeable once deployed, and no party can pause them or reverse trades. Governance can switch on protocol fees for supported pools within limits set in the code.
2. Uniswap Labs. The company, legally Universal Navigation Inc., that builds the Uniswap web app, the Uniswap Wallet and APIs. Its Terms of Service, last updated July 28, 2026, call each product a "purely non-custodial application" and place disputes under New York law with arbitration in New York.
3. UNI holders and the Uniswap Foundation. UNI holders vote on the treasury, protocol fee settings and other governance matters. The Uniswap Foundation is a separate organization that historically funded grants; in late 2025 most of its staff moved to Uniswap Labs (see the history section below).

Hayden Adams created Uniswap. In a February 2019 post he described receiving an Ethereum Foundation grant in July 2018 and announcing the protocol on November 2, 2018, the final day of the Devcon 4 conference in Prague.

How the protocol works

Each Uniswap pool holds two tokens. Prices come from the ratio of the reserves rather than from matched buy and sell orders, so a swap adds one token to the pool and removes the other, moving the price along a curve. The bigger the trade relative to the pool, the more the price moves against you. OBOL's guide to how AMMs work explains the math.

Liquidity providers (LPs) deposit token pairs into pools and earn the pool's swap fee in return. The versions differ in how that liquidity is managed:

Hooks deserve particular attention. They let anyone attach custom logic to a v4 pool, such as dynamic fees or limit-order behavior. That flexibility is useful, but a hook is code written by whoever created the pool, not by Uniswap Labs, so its quality varies. LPs face impermanent loss whenever pool prices move.

Uniswap Labs reported that v4 went live on ten networks at launch: Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, Base, BNB Chain, Blast, World Chain, Avalanche and Zora Network. Before launch, the v4 contracts went through nine independent audits and a $2.35 million security competition, and Uniswap Labs offered a bug bounty of up to $15.5 million for critical issues. An audit reduces risk but does not guarantee that a contract is free of bugs.

How a Uniswap swap works, step by step

The exact screens change often, so treat this as the sequence of decisions rather than a click-by-click guide.

1. Use a self-custody wallet. Uniswap never holds your funds. You connect a wallet such as the Uniswap Wallet, a browser extension or a hardware wallet. The crypto wallets guide covers the options.
2. Choose the network and tokens. The same token symbol can exist on many networks and can be imitated by look-alike contracts. Check the contract address against the issuer's official source before swapping an unfamiliar token.
3. Read the quote. The app shows the expected output, price impact, the network cost and a minimum received based on your slippage tolerance.
4. Approve, then swap. The first time you trade an ERC-20 token, your wallet asks you to grant a spending approval. Then you sign the swap itself. Each on-chain action costs gas paid to the network, not to Uniswap.
5. Confirm on-chain. Once included in a block, the swap is final. There is no customer service desk that can undo it.

What a swap costs

A Uniswap trade can include up to three kinds of cost, as of October 2026:

• Pool (LP) fee. Set per pool and version, for example 0.3% on standard v2 pools or one of the v3 tiers listed above. It is built into the quote.
• Protocol fee. A share of the LP fee that goes to the protocol instead of LPs, where governance has activated it. Under the "UNIfication" design approved in December 2025, v2 pools move from a 0.3% LP fee to 0.25% for LPs plus 0.05% for the protocol, and v3 protocol fees are one quarter of LP fees on the 0.01% and 0.05% tiers and one sixth on the 0.30% and 1% tiers. Activation is rolled out pool by pool, so not every pool charges it.
• Network gas. Paid in the network's native token. It is usually the largest cost on Ethereum mainnet for small trades and far lower on Layer 2 networks.

Uniswap Labs' help center states that its web app and wallet charge no interface fee, a policy in place since December 27, 2025. Third-party apps that route through Uniswap contracts may add their own fee.

The cheapest way to trade on Uniswap usually means trading on a Layer 2 network where gas is lower, choosing a deep pool so price impact stays small, and avoiding unnecessarily wide slippage settings. These are general mechanics, not a guarantee of a particular price.

UNI, governance and the 2025 fee switch

UNI went live on September 16, 2020, with 1 billion tokens minted at genesis. The original allocation was 60% to community members, 21.266% to team members and future employees, 18.044% to investors and 0.69% to advisors, with team, investor and advisor shares vesting over four years.

On November 10, 2025, Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation published the "UNIfication" proposal. It asked governance to turn on protocol fees and use them to burn UNI, to burn 100 million UNI from the treasury in one step, to send Unichain sequencer fees (after Layer 1 costs and a 15% share to Optimism) into the same burn, to set Uniswap Labs' interface fees to zero, and to move most Uniswap Foundation staff to Uniswap Labs. The Block reported on December 25, 2025, that the vote passed with 99.9% support. UNI holders do not receive a share of Uniswap Labs' equity; the token's role is governance over the protocol and treasury.

Unichain

Unichain is an Ethereum Layer 2 network developed by Uniswap Labs, with mainnet launched on February 11, 2025. It is part of Optimism's Superchain, which is why a share of its sequencer revenue goes to Optimism. Using Uniswap on Unichain adds Layer 2 risks such as reliance on a sequencer and on bridge contracts to move assets in and out; the rollups guide and the bridging guide cover these trade-offs.

Is Uniswap safe?

The main contracts have a long public track record and are non-upgradeable, which removes the risk of an admin key changing them. Most losses associated with Uniswap come from how it is used, not from the core contracts:

• Fake tokens. Anyone can create a pool for any token. A token named after a popular project is not necessarily that project's token.
• Approvals. A spending approval stays active until you revoke it. Unlimited approvals to a malicious contract can drain a wallet later.
• Phishing sites. Look-alike domains imitate the Uniswap app and ask you to sign malicious approvals. Bookmark the official address.
• Slippage and MEV. Bots can trade around a pending swap and capture value from wide slippage settings; see MEV explained.
• Hooks and forks. v4 hooks and Uniswap-code forks run code that Uniswap Labs did not write.
• Jurisdiction and sanctions. The Terms of Service bar users subject to US sanctions and note that some products or assets may not be available or appropriate in every jurisdiction.

On regulation: Uniswap Labs received a Wells notice from the SEC in April 2024. On February 25, 2025, The Block reported that the SEC had closed its investigation without enforcement action. Uniswap Labs does not hold an exchange or broker license, and its terms describe its products as software interfaces rather than a custodial service.

For OBOL's assessment, see OBOL's Uniswap DEX review and OBOL's review of the Uniswap protocol. The DEX ratings compare it with other exchanges.

Getting help

Uniswap Labs runs a help center at support.uniswap.org with articles on swaps, fees, network costs and the wallet. Because transactions are on-chain and non-custodial, support can explain what happened but cannot reverse a trade or recover funds sent to the wrong address. Legal notices go to [email protected]. Nobody from Uniswap will ask for your recovery phrase.

Official channels

• Web app: app.uniswap.org
• Help center: support.uniswap.org
• Developer documentation: developers.uniswap.org
• Blog: blog.uniswap.org
• X: x.com/Uniswap
• GitHub: github.com/Uniswap (GitHub-verified owner of the uniswap.org domain)