Uniswap (UNI) is the world’s leading decentralized exchange (DEX) and automated market maker (AMM) on the Ethereum (ETH) network.
UNI provides means for users to create liquidity pools for any token based on the ERC-20 protocol standard and trade them in a completely decentralized way. It also rewards liquidity providers (LPs) for the liquidity they have provided to each liquidity pool by distributing the fees amongst all LPs. Along with lucrative incentives for investors comes a platform for buying, selling, and trading various digital assets, all without going through any know-your-customer (KYC) or verification procedures.
Interestingly enough, the UNI exchange didn’t have a native token until late 2020, but that changed with the UNI token airdrop. The now-famous airdrop saw the distribution of free UNI tokens to anyone who used the exchange before September of last year.
The Road From $1,200 to $12,000
It is safe to say that the past year has been particularly eventful for the cryptocurrency markets. The entire market exploded, and Bitcoin officially became a trillion-dollar asset, while many altcoins saw massive gains -the UNI token is no exception. In other words, those who held their airdrop tokens, a total of 400 UNI, would be able to cash in a whopping $12,000 that initially came for free.
That’s right – those who held on to their UNI tokens received through the September of 2020 airdrop are now sitting on roughly $12,000 following the UNI token’s exponential run-up!
It is also worth noting that other platforms have followed in the footsteps of the Uniswap DEX and token distribution model with airdrops of their own. 1INCH exchange, a rival of Uniswap, also had a few rounds of airdrops – all of these rival airdrops have paled to the overall success seen by the distribution of UNI’s governance token, however.
The (Failed) Retroactive Proposal For a 2nd UNI Token Airdrop
Last October, the Uniswap community had its second governance proposal, which suggested an additional 5 million UNI for retroactive distribution to the community with a second airdrop, which ultimately failed to reach the required quorum of 40 million votes. The proposal fell under the requirement to pass a governance all by a mere 6%. The first-ever proposal suggested lowering the UNI governance proposal and quorum thresholds significantly but failed to reach the necessary votes by only 1%.
If the proposal had passed, a total of 12,619 addresses that interacted with Uniswap through a proxy contract would have received 400 UNI each, resulting in 5.05 million tokens being re-distributed from the project vault.
Closing Thoughts
In essence, everyone who used Uniswap received 400 UNI tokens that they could claim for free. At the time, the price was trading between $2 and $4, and many sold their UNI for a nice profit. Those who held on, however, were handsomely rewarded.
Although the proposal for a retroactive UNI token airdrop failed, when there is another distribution, further rewards will likely be paid out to continuous loyal HODL’ers of the now-legendary Uniswap token. Why legendary, you ask? Well, UNI is the first decentralized exchange token to break into the top-10 most popular cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, as seen in last week’s article here – legendary, decentralized, financial history in the making!
*The UNI token is currently trading just above $30 at the time of writing this article. Following the token airdrop last year, September of 2020, 400 UNI tokens were equivalent to around $1,200.
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