UNI (Uniswap) — the token for voting on the exchange

UNI in plain words

The Uniswap exchange works without a middleman company and is like a swap machine with no cashier. You put in one cryptocurrency and get another, and the machine works out the rate by itself from how much of each it holds. There is more about it on the Uniswap page.

Holding UNI gives you a say in how this swap machine works: what fees to charge, what to spend the shared money on and which upgrades to accept (what is a token).

People got UNI in an unusual way. In September 2020 anyone who had used Uniswap before 1 September could claim 400 UNI for free, and those who had put their own cryptocurrency into the swap machines got more, so part of the votes went straight to ordinary users¹.

The value of UNI rests on demand and on how useful the vote itself is. The exchange's income is not paid out to holders.

How the UNI token works

How UNI holders vote

Picture a residents' meeting in an apartment building, where each vote depends on the size of the apartment. On Uniswap your vote depends on how much UNI you hold, and the more tokens you have, the more votes you get.

For your vote to count, you have to switch it on once in your wallet beforehand, that is, assign your vote to yourself or to a representative, like giving a neighbor power of attorney. The tokens stay with you, and whoever you assigned the vote to does the voting. Many holders skip this and never take part in votes⁵⁶.

As at a meeting where one resident owns ten apartments, the final say often belongs to those with a lot of UNI or a lot of delegated votes, while the vote of someone with a couple of tokens changes almost nothing.

What UNI holders have already decided by vote

The main recent decision came in December 2025. Almost unanimously, with 99.9% of the vote, holders approved a package of changes called UNIfication. It switched on a fee paid to the exchange itself and burned 100 million UNI from the project's shared treasury in one go⁷⁴.

How the exchange's fees destroy UNI

The whole swap fee used to go to the people who had put their cryptocurrency into the "machine", known as liquidity providers. Since December 2025 a small share of the fee goes to Uniswap itself, and in 2026 this has been switched on in many Uniswap swap machines and on many networks⁷⁸. For example, in machines with a 0.3% fee, out of every 30 cents of fee on a $100 swap, 25 cents go to the providers and 5 cents to the exchange.

This money, in various cryptocurrencies, builds up in a special piggy bank, which is really a separate program, a smart contract. Nobody can simply take it out, neither the team nor the holders.

The piggy bank opens in only one way: by destroying, that is burning, a set amount of UNI for good. Whoever finds it worthwhile does this. Once the piggy bank holds more than the UNI needed to open it is worth, someone burns those tokens and takes the contents. In this way the exchange's fees keep turning into destroyed UNI. Holders get no cash from it, but the number of tokens falls, and the more people swap cryptocurrency on Uniswap, the more UNI gets burned.

If demand for the token has not dropped, the remaining UNI becomes scarcer, although that is no guarantee the price will rise.

How much UNI there is and why the number changes

• In 2020, 1 billion UNI were created. About 60% went to the community, and the rest went to the team, investors and advisers, released gradually over four years².
• New tokens don't appear on their own. Holders have the right to vote for issuing up to 2% a year, but no such vote has taken place²³. How issuing new cryptocurrency works in general is covered in what is issuance.
• Since December 2025 UNI is being burned, and the future amount depends on how much is swapped on the exchange. Check how many tokens have been burned to date on a block explorer.
  where to check: network explorer, e.g. blockchair.com

How UNI differs from a stock and ETH

To see where UNI fits, compare it with a company's stock and with ETH, the coin of the Ethereum network used there to pay the fee.

	UNI	Stock	ETH
Does it give a vote on decisions?	yes	yes1	no
Does it pay dividends?	no	varies	no
Does it give a stake in a company?	no	yes	no
Is it needed to pay the network fee?	no	no	yes
Does part of the fees go to burning?	yes2	no	yes
Can the price fall sharply?	yes	yes	yes

1. At a shareholders' meeting. ↩
2. Since December 2025. ↩

In Ethereum, part of every fee is burned too, and it has worked this way since 2021⁹; you can read about the coin itself in Ethereum. Neither a vote nor burning protects against a price drop on its own.

Pros and cons of UNI, a stock and ETH

UNI is closer to a vote at a meeting than to a stock. It shapes the exchange's rules, while the holder has no right to its profit.

UNI token risks

• The price of UNI swings a lot, and burning does not guarantee that it will rise. See how the price has moved.
  where to check: crypto aggregator, e.g. coinmarketcap.com
• Burning depends on the exchange's trading volume: the fewer swaps on Uniswap, the less fee income and the less UNI gets burned.
• Decisions may be made in the interests of large holders and of those who have collected many delegated votes.
• The legal status of voting tokens is not yet clear everywhere ⚖️: different countries treat them differently, and a change in the rules could affect both the exchange and the token.

Where to check current data

How much UNI has already been burned and how much is in holders' hands right now (in circulation) is shown on a block explorer, that is, a website where you can see every record on the network.

Votes running right now appear on the Uniswap voting site.

Look up the current price and trading volume on a crypto data aggregator.

More detail on other decisions by UNI holders

Holders also decide how the project's treasury is spent. In early 2025 they allocated money from it to develop Uniswap and its own network, Unichain¹⁰. The same year the holder community was set up as a nonprofit association in the US state of Wyoming, so that it has rights and protection within the ordinary legal system ⚖️¹¹. The token's role was changed in 2025 by proposals from the team, which holders then approved by vote¹².

The fee for the exchange was switched on step by step. In March 2026 it was turned on in all version v3 machines (pools) on Ethereum and on eight more networks⁸¹³. In July 2026 it followed in the pools of the exchange's new version (v4) on seven networks, and on the Robinhood Chain network as well¹⁴¹⁵.

Frequently asked questions