The Uniswap Foundation recently revealed its plans for the launch of the 4th version of its decentralized exchange protocol (DEX), Uniswap v4, now scheduled for Q3 2024. Occupying 1st place in the ranking of decentralized finance applications (DeFi), Uniswap aims to strengthen its leadership position through major innovations, promising to enhance the user experience with a more optimized architecture and new features.
Uniswap v4 scheduled for this year
In a recent announcement on the X network, the Uniswap Foundation declared yesterday, Thursday February 15, 2024, that it now plans to launch the 4th version of its protocol in the 3rd quarter of this year.
Uniswap, the leader in decentralized finance protocols (DeFi), occupies 1st position in the ranking of applications by transaction volume, with more than $7.5 billion over the last 7 days.
In June 2023, the Uniswap Foundation revealed that it was working on version 4 of its decentralized exchange (DEX), an update whose code would be exclusive to the foundation for 4 years before being made open source.
This new version of the protocol will include several innovations, notably a “singleton architecture” that should reduce gas costs, and the introduction of “Hooks”, an innovative concept for customizing liquidity pools and enabling the creation of limit orders.
Now that the launch of Dencun on Mainnet has been scheduled for March 2024, we’re excited to provide an update to the community!
Uniswap v4’s launch is tentatively set for Q3 2024.
From community-built Hooks (https://t.co/WyaGr1Ti1t), to events, to Twitter Spaces, the…
– Uniswap Foundation (@UniswapFND) February 15, 2024
The Uniswap Foundation believes that this new version of the protocol will be the most rigorously audited code of all applications deployed on Ethereum.
It envisages deployment in 3 phases:
- The 1st phase will be devoted to finalizing and testing the code, optimizing transaction costs, and improving security;
- The 2nd phase will involve deploying the application on the testnet and auditing the code by various entities;
- Phase 3 will mark the official launch on the Ethereum mainnet.
In its announcement, Uniswap clarified that v4 deployment is scheduled for Q3 2024, following Ethereum’s Dencun update by a few months, now scheduled for March.
What role will the UNI token play in this new version?
While the Uniswap application is one of the most widely used, its governance token, the UNI, is not taking full advantage of this volume of activity, and its performance is less than stellar.
UNI token price since May 2022
Over the past year, the UNI token price has performed poorly compared with the overall cryptocurrency market, remaining in a consolidation zone between $4 and $8.
Nevertheless, the introduction of new features, such as the concept of Hooks, could enable different applications to give it new use cases, which would allow the UNI token to increase in value.
In addition, analyst DefiIgnas, in a post on the X network, speculated that the Uniswap Foundation might follow Frax’s lead in developing its own second-layer (L2) infrastructure on Ethereum, and might consider using the UNI token to settle transaction fees on this new blockchain.
