Uniswap is a decentralized liquidity provider that serves to trade ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network. The Uniswap protocol is fully decentralized, putting into use the automated liquidity protocol which uses incentives to give a guaranteed liquidity pool which is essential to enable instant execution of transactions. Currently, Uniswap is the largest Decentralized Exchange in terms of trading volume. ## **History** The idea of Uniswap was born out of a post made on Reddit by Vitalik Buterin in 2016. In his post, suggested a third option (at the time) to decentralized exchanges. The idea was a DEX that uses an algorithmic equation that automatically determines the swap rate based on the balances of both tokens and the actual demand for this swapping pair. x \* y = k is the primary formula that was brought about by Vitalik’s idea. \ Almost a year after the post was put up on Reddit Hayden Adams, took up the idea and started working on the smart contract and website for the same which was between October and November 2017. At this point, it was called Unipug and there were a lot of shortcomings in the code, the user-friendliness of the platform, and even the whitepaper. \ Through some members of the Ethereum team, Hayden was able to meet Vitalik at the Deconomy 2018 event in Seoul. It is at the event that Vitalik and the Ethereum founder suggested to Hayden a number of issues to work on, including changing the name to Uniswap. \ Most of these issues were resolved by the first quarter of 2018 and with the help of the Ethereum foundation and other grants, Uniswap v0 was released in November 2018 at the Devcon4 conference. After going live, the platform quickly gained liquidity and could trade large volumes. 6 months after launch, the second round of funding was completed that enabled further development including v2. ## **Biggest Claim to Fame** The most attractive thing with Uniswap is that it almost completely solves the problem of high spreads for illiquid assets on order-book exchanges. This problem arises from there being a little incentive for market makers to provide liquidity on very thinly traded assets. Uniswap made it possible for anyone to be a market maker by depositing assets into a pool and earning fees based on the amount of trading activity. \ Current data and numbers indicate that Uniswap handles over $1.5 billion worth of transactions daily. This has been the case almost since its launch. This underlays the importance of the system and how attractive it is to investors. ## **Biggest Criticism** The biggest criticism for Uniswap so far has been the high gas fees related to using the blockchain. Since it is built on Ethereum and is very high in demand, the blockchain gets jammed a lot due to the high number of transactions, the result is usually high gas fees to complete transactions. While Uniswap itself charges significantly low fees, the Ethereum fees are quite high, and paying double fees leads to higher fees overall. This leaves Uniswap to be most useful for the high-value transactions. \ The risk of impermanent loss is higher with more volatile cryptocurrencies. These are often the cryptocurrencies where you can earn the most interest, so it's important not to choose the crypto you stake solely by the potential rewards. This is also a lurking issue on Uniswap. ## **Team** UNiswap was founded by Hayden Adams, who currently is the founder and CEO. Before founding Uniswap, Hayden worked as an engineer for Siemens where he built and did simulations for the automotive and aerospace industries. Hayden holds a mechanical engineering degree from Stony Brook University. \ Mary-Catherine Lader is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Uniswap. Mary holds a Master in Business Administration and a Doctor of Law from Havard. Prior to joining Unisawp, Mary worked as a managing director and chief operating officer for BlockRock among other positions in the organization. \ Ashleigh Schap is the current growth lead for Uniswap, responsible for coordinating new programs, and developing and implementing growth programs and activities for the entire project. Before joining Uniswap, Ashleigh worked as the product development lead for MakerDAO. ## **Conclusion** To any enthusiast interested in the decentralized finance industry, Uniswap would be a perfect fit right into your portfolio. Uniswap is currently the most liquid decentralized exchange, but even with that, Uniswap’s V3 promises to make crypto even more liquid than is. From past upgrades, the Uniswap team has never failed. V3 is protected from forking for at least 2 years, giving it a headstart over other decentralized exchanges.