Uniswap’s v2 expansions comes regardless of the Uniswap crew making ready to launch its v4 model earlier than the fourth quarter.
In a shock transfer, Uniswap has launched its older v2 iteration throughout a number of chains, regardless of the main spot decentralized trade gearing as much as launch its fourth model for the primary time later this yr.
On Feb. 20, Uniswap v2 rolled out throughout Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Avalanche. Whereas every community already helps Uniswap v3, the crew mentioned v2 provides advantages as a result of simplicity of its swimming pools and buying and selling interface.
“With each v2 and v3 out there throughout all supported networks, customers have the pliability to decide on between simplicity with v2 and extra superior options with v3,” Uniswap mentioned. “As a result of it’s easier code than v3, it is oftentimes cheaper and simpler to swap and [provide liquidity] on Uniswap v2. It is also very easy to deploy new swimming pools, which is why it’s so common for launching new tokens.”
The crew famous the recognition of Uniswap v2 codebase, with DeFi Llama monitoring 568 forks of Uniswap v2 which might be presently lively. Nonetheless, Uniswap mentioned the forks have proved weak to safety points, with customers struggling $55M value of losses to exploits, bugs, and rug-pulls focusing on Uniswap v2 forks throughout BNB Chain, Base, and Arbitrum over the previous yr.
Uniswap v2 retains market share
Uniswap launched v2 in Could 2020, with the protocol shortly rising as a pillar underpinning the “DeFi summer season” increase. Whereas Uniswap v1 pioneered the automated market maker trade and enabled swaps between ERC-20 tokens and ETH, v2 launched the flexibility to swap between any pairing of ERC-20 tokens, assist for a number of worth oracles, and fuel charge optimizations.
Uniswap adopted up with the launch of v3 in Could 2021, pioneering superior liquidity administration options for asset suppliers within the type of “concentrated liquidity.”
Regardless of enabling new methods for classy and lively liquidity suppliers (LPs), many lay customers had been rendered uncompetitive by Uniswap v3 and resorted to outsourcing liquidity administration to third-party protocols. The elevated complexity of v3’s codebase can typically lead to increased charges for merchants too.
Trades executed by Uniswap are mechanically routed by whichever protocol provides the perfect worth out there. Uniswap v3 on Ethereum boasts a large lead by commerce quantity, processing 863.8M value of trades over the previous 24 hours — equating to 21% of spot DEX exercise, in response to CoinGecko. Uniswap v2 is available in seventh with $182.7M or a 4.5% market share.
Uniswap v3 is the highest decentralized trade by whole worth locked (TVL) with $2.76B throughout 13 chains, together with $2.28B on Ethereum. Uniswap v2 intently follows with $2B solely residing on Ethereum, highlighting the protocol’s reputation amongst liquidity suppliers.
Uniswap can be gearing as much as launch its v4 iteration, with the crew focusing on a late Q3 2024 launch per a Feb. 15 announcement. V4 will introduce a number of new options together with restrict orders, transaction charge optimizations, auto-compounding LP charges, and integrations with lending protocols for idle liquidity.
Final week, Uniswap tweeted that it’s working in direction of finalizing the code for v4, and can subsequent solicit code audits and deploy v4 on testnet, earlier than transitioning to its mainnet launch.
