A DeFi giant, one of the largest representatives of DEX, a liquidity provider that runs on the Ethereum network. All of that is Uniswap, but let’s take it step by step. In this article we’ve put together everything you want to know about Uniswap and $UNI: what is Uniswap, what is UNI coin, what’s the link between Pancake Swap and Uniswap and how to buy $UNI with crypto at the best rate.

What is Uniswap?

Uniswap is the leading Decentralised Exchange (DEX) in the crypto sphere, operating as the main passage between CeFi (Centralized Finance) and DeFi (Decentralized Finance). DEXs are the easiest way to get funds into DeFi and into your favourite protocols.

Originally published in late 2018, it was in its first iteration (V1). Later in 2020 V2 was released with the introduction of V3 in May of 2021. Each iteration has brought with it more features and upgrades for its users as Decentralized Exchanges slowly catch up to centralized ones.

Uniswaps founder, Hayden Adams, has written an entire blog dedicated to Uniswap’s history and rise to fame. Being the first Decentralized Exchange it was the spearhead of the DeFi movement. His original release tweet garnered a mere 1,000 likes for what would become a decentralized exchange handling billions of dollars in volume.

Uniswap’s code has always been open-source, available on Github for anyone to use or criticize. This meant it wasn’t long before other big DEXs took off, such as PancakeSwap or Sushiswap.

Key features of the project

To fully understand Uniswap, we must understand how Decentralized Exchanges work. Because there is no centralized authority, its users trust the smart contracts with making all transactions happen instead of the people running the exchange, like it would be for a central exchange.

Complete decentralization means it is a permissionless exchange and cannot be censored. Anyone with a phone and an internet connection can access Uniswap and therefore access cryptocurrency and DeFi. These are the foundations of DeFi and the reason why they were created in the first place.

Some of the other features of the Uniswap are:

• It works as an Automated Market Maker (AMM) – a protocol that eliminates the need of the third party in the exchange process and allows crypto market participants to proceed with a transaction excluding any intermediates.
• Runs on the Ethereum Mainnet for ERC20 tokens
• Has a native token – a UNI coin

What is UNI Coin?

UNI coin is an Ethereum based token (ERC20) that powers the UNI exchange. As the Uniswap exchange is not actively using its token, UNI token is used for governance purposes, allowing its holders to vote on upcoming proposals so the community always decides the direction of the project.

This is common practice for Decentralized Cryptocurrency projects, removing the need for a centralized authority to make the decisions.

Also, Uniswaps liquidity pools (pools of cryptocurrencies locked in smart contracts) provide investors to buy and hold UNI in return for future rewards coming from the use of the exchange.

Investors hope that as Decentralized Exchanges such as Uniswap grow in popularity their price will increase. Currently, UNI has a market cap of $6.4bn, with 689 million tokens in circulation. Such a large market cap ranks it #24 out of all cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

Uniswap Ecosystem

Currently Uniswap’s V2 and V3 protocols are handling almost $2bn in volume every day! To put that into perspective Kucoin, one of the largest centralized cryptocurrency exchanges is currently handling around $1.5bn in daily volume.

Being decentralized by nature, Uniswap’s ecosystem is made up of more than 300 different dApps (Decentralized Applications). Some of these include Gelato, a smart contract automator providing Uniswap with limit orders; Dune Analytics, free community cryptocurrency analytics and major self-custodial wallets such as Metamask and Trustwallet.

Uniswap also has a grants program to help up and coming projects flourish within the Uniswap ecosystem.

PancakeSwap vs Uniswap

Released in 2020, PancakeSwap was inspired by Uniswap and, most believed, utilized a lot of Uniswap’s code in their development as it was completely open-source. The reason why PancakeSwap was able to flourish, having daily trading volume over $600 million was due to the blockchain its run on.

Uniswap runs on Ethereum, whilst PancakeSwap utilizes BSC (Binance Smart Chart). Binance Smart Chain boasts much lower transaction fees which reflects onto the PancakeSwap exchange. To fully understand the massive difference in fees you should try both exchanges for yourself.

The average fee on Ethereum is $15, whilst the average fee on BSC is $0.30.

So why would you still use Uniswap even if the transaction fees are much higher? Being the biggest decentralized exchange, Uniswap offers the largest amount of liquidity and incentives for its users to use and hold UNI tokens to gain rewards.

Decentralized exchanges are reliant on liquidity providers for their liquidity, meaning when you buy tokens from Uniswap, a real user is providing that liquidity to you from the certain pool you bought from. The liquidity pool fee is sent to liquidity providers as incentive to keep on providing liquidity.

UNI Exchange: how to buy UNI with BTC?

So you know all about the Uniswap, how do you go about buying their native token UNI? The answer is always simple – JansWap.com!

Let’s cut the chase and see how to buy UNI coin by exchanging it for BTC on JansWap:

• Visit the JansWap website.
• Select the proper pair (BTC to UNI).
• Enter the amount of BTC you want to convert to UNI, and the aggregator will locate the best exchange rates for you.
• Click the ‘Exchange’ button to go to a trading platform. Enter the wallet address where you want to send the Uniswap crypto.
• Send the BTC deposit to the generated BTC address.
• Click on ‘Proceed with the Exchange’ and if you want, provide a review for the exchange platform you choose.
• Just wait a few moments for the conversion to take place, and the UNI swap will be complete!