Uniswap V3 Latest Updates, Layer 2 Version Now Live

Recently, news surrounding Uniswap has been quite密集. First, an education organization called DeFi Education Fund initiated a proposal requesting 1 million UNI to establish a community oversight organization, providing funds to existing and new political groups engaged in crypto assets policy lobbying. Subsequently, although the organization faced widespread community skepticism, the proposal was passed with an overwhelming 73% approval vote, successfully obtaining 1 million UNI . Just 9 days after receiving the UNI, on July 13, the organization sold 500,000 UNI, profiting over tens of millions. This triggered industry reflection on DeFi voting governance mechanisms, such as how to prevent dominant voting factions from exploiting their power and DAO structures for self-dealing. This also provides reference and reflection for the SushiSwap token sale proposal that sparked heated discussions last weekend.

The following day, on July 14, Uniswap V3 launched its Alpha version on the Optimistic Ethereum mainnet, followed by an announcement on July 16 introducing six new features and improvements. Such intensive development demonstrates Uniswap's determination at the time of V3's launch: to make Uniswap the most flexible and efficient automated market maker (AMM) ever.

As of this writing, the UNI price on OKX is reported at $16.562, up 2.70% intraday. It has fallen 63% from its yearly high of $44.971.

Uniswap V3: 75 Days Post-Launch, Aggressively Capturing DEX Market Share

There's a data chart on Dune Analytics that clearly lists the performance of V1, V2, and V3 within their first 100 days from launch. It can be seen that V3 has been live for only 75 days, yet from its very first day, its USD-denominated trading volume has been in the lead.

Uniswap V3上线75天，正疯狂吞噬DEX市场

As a leading decentralized trading platform, total value locked (TVL) and trading volume are important metrics for evaluating its development. According to Uniswap official website data, Uniswap V3's total value locked is $1.64 billion, with 24-hour trading volume of $601 million. Ranked by trading volume, Uniswap V3 ranks first among DEXs.

Uniswap V3上线75天，正疯狂吞噬DEX市场

To provide a more intuitive comparison, let's look at Uniswap V2 data. V2's total liquidity is $3.78 billion, with 24-hour trading volume of $182 million.

Uniswap V3上线75天，正疯狂吞噬DEX市场

Combined with active user and transaction count data from OKLink, V3 currently has 12,408 active users and 23,001 transactions, while V2 has 22,598 active users and 50,582 transactions. This shows that although V3's locked assets are less than 50% of V2's, and both active users and transaction frequency are lower than V2, its trading volume is higher. This reflects that Uniswap V3's concentrated liquidity granularity control is better suited for large-volume trading , and capital efficiency has seen a qualitative improvement in V3.

The granularity control feature refers to users being able to concentrate capital efficiency within the most frequently traded price ranges to maximize returns. For example, since USDC-DAI prices mostly range between 0.99 and 1.01, users can allocate their funds only to this range without considering extreme scenarios, achieving concentrated liquidity and improving capital efficiency.

From the chart below of Uniswap V3's main trading pairs, it can be seen that LPs have provided significant liquidity for USDC, ETH, and stablecoin pairs.

Uniswap V3上线75天，��疯狂吞噬DEX市场

This is significantly different from V2. The main reason is that Uniswap V3 allows liquidity providers to select fees between 0.05%, 0.30%, and 1.00%. Through these settings, higher fees can be set for trading pairs with greater impermanent loss risk, while lower fees are selected for pairs like stablecoins that experience minimal price volatility. Therefore, V3's stablecoin-friendly characteristic has attracted numerous LPs to provide liquidity.

Uniswap V3上线75天，正疯狂吞噬DEX市场

Last Friday, Uniswap announced six improvements and new features: automatic fee tier selection, liquidity range charts, proposal creation UI, translations in 30 languages and crowdsourcing tools, Uniswap Help Center, documentation improvements, and a new landing page.

Take automatic fee tier selection as an example: previously, liquidity providers might have faced uncertainty when selecting fee tiers. To help LPs choose appropriate fee tiers, Uniswap now suggests reasonable fee tiers based on the majority of LP strategies in the market. Of course, users can also manually select fee tiers through the edit button. Liquidity range charts refer to the LP interface displaying real-time distribution of liquidity in the selected pool, providing general market insight on how to optimally allocate liquidity. LPs can use range sliders to adjust their minimum and maximum prices alongside pre-existing manual entry fields, eliminating the previous awkward situation of liquidity providers having to switch back and forth between the Uniswap App and Uniswap Info.

Uniswap's Layer 2 Version is Here

On July 14, Uniswap V3 officially launched on Optimistic Ethereum (OΞ) and enabled the Alpha version. Although currently still in the testing phase with various features not fully released, this launch represents another step forward for Ethereum's Layer 2.

As is well known, after last year's DeFi Summer boom, the Ethereum network experienced trading congestion and expensive fees due to surging on-chain activity. As the largest decentralized trading platform, Uniswap is recognized as the number one gas consumer. One year later, ETH Gas Station data shows that Uniswap consumed 1,500 Ethereum in the past 30 days, still firmly holding the top spot on the Ethereum gas consumption chart.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

High gas fees and congested network conditions have also shaken Uniswap's dominant position, with it briefly being overtaken by latecomers. Therefore, launching a Layer 2 solution is not only a necessity for Ethereum network development, but also an important measure for Uniswap to recover lost users and liquidity providers, continuing to occupy its position as a leading DeFi trading platform.

Currently, in this Alpha phase, OΞ supports an initial throughput of 0.6 transactions per second, which is basically the same as Uniswap's throughput on Ethereum Layer 1. If fully released in the future, throughput will exceed this level. Since it's still in the testing phase, the cross-layer asset bridge temporarily supports only 6 tokens: ETH , DAI , SNX, sUSD, USDT, and WBTC. More tokens will be supported in the coming days and weeks.

Compared to Layer 1, the OΞ version of Uniswap has two significant advantages. First is low cost: OΞ can theoretically save up to 10 times in trading costs. According to Optimism.io's Gas Comparison data, Uniswap trading gas consumption on Layer 1 is 144,278, while on Optimism it's 14,136. With Optimism fees at $0.15, this represents a 10.2x savings.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

For Synthetix, used for derivatives trading, this comparison is even more pronounced: using Optimism can help users save 44.4 times in costs.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

Second is no long wait times: users can experience near-instant trading on Layer 2. As OΞ infrastructure undergoes large-scale testing and optimization, trading speeds will continue to improve, ultimately meeting DEX trading demands for low cost and high speed.

As of writing on July 19, $5.77 million in assets are already locked on the Layer 2 version of Uniswap, with 24-hour trading volume of $1.15 million. Compared to the boom when Uniswap V3 launched on Layer 1 for just a few days, the OΞ version of Uniswap is still primarily used by early adopters.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

For users who want to experience the Layer 2 version early, we've prepared a simple guide for reference. First, users need to log into their MetaMask wallet, then switch the network to Optimistic Ethereum.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

If users have never configured Optimistic Ethereum network parameters in their wallet, they need to do so first. Industry media BlockBeats provides a relatively simple method for configuring network parameters: log in to chainlist.org, connect your wallet , find Optimistic Ethereum with Chain ID 10, click "Add to MetaMask," and confirm according to its requirements. Soon, Optimistic Ethereum will appear in your network.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

Then, returning to the Uniswap main interface, you can see the interface automatically refreshes and switches to the OΞ version of Uniswap. If you have no assets in your OΞ wallet, the system will clearly prompt at the top "Deposit to Optimism." As for specific cross-layer asset conversion, the experience is similar to others.

Uniswap的Layer 2版本来了

It's worth noting that Uniswap doesn't yet support one-click migration. Therefore, if users want to migrate Layer 1 market-making assets to the OΞ version, they need to first withdraw Layer 1 market-making assets, then migrate tokens through the asset bridge, and re-establish market-making on the OΞ version after successful migration. Here, I should clarify some drawbacks of the OΞ version, as these may pose risks to early users.

First is the downtime issue. Uniswap mentioned in its official blog that the early stages of OΞ will experience downtime (including planned and potentially unplanned). During these periods, LPs will be unable to earn trading fees to compensate for price risk.

Second is withdrawal time. Depositing from Ethereum Layer 1 to OΞ is instant, but before the fast withdrawal service feature is available, users withdrawing from OΞ to Layer 1 will need 7 days. If better opportunities arise during this period, users will undoubtedly miss them, and capital efficiency will be significantly reduced.

Third, the limited selection of assets and the liquidity fragmentation issue with Layer 1. Since Layer 1 and Layer 2 currently cannot share liquidity, they are in a fragmented state. The OΞ version of Uniswap, having just launched, will certainly have less liquidity than Layer 1. Therefore, although Layer 2 gas fees and trading times will be greatly reduced, if users trade with larger amounts, they may face higher slippage. The prudent approach is to first check market prices, compare with OΞ prices, and then decide whether to proceed with trading .

Optimistic Ethereum plans to support composability in the future, but currently doesn't support arbitrary smart contract deployment. If there's a need, you must contact the Optimism team. Although the OΞ version of Uniswap still appears to be in early stages, it is indeed an important starting point for Layer 2. This Uniswap launch is also a significant stress test for Optimism, which will fix and upgrade issues that may arise. Uniswap wrote in their blog: "Scaling Ethereum will be an iterative process, but this is an important step forward. Optimistic Rollups and Ethereum 2.0 are complementary scaling solutions that will drive DeFi to mainstream adoption."

Indeed, we can foresee that in the coming year, more and more DeFi protocols will move toward Layer 2. This will further expand the Ethereum ecosystem, thereby accommodating more DeFi, NFT, and other activities, buying more time for Ethereum 2.0's launch, and further cementing its position as the leading public chain.

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