Uniswap – the leading DeFi DEX – has closed $11M in funding in a Series A round.
Excited to announce our Series A!!!https://t.co/C3ozA4b5Da We are thrilled to welcome @a16z crypto, @usv, @VersionOneVC, @variantfund, @paraficapital, @svangel, and ACapital as investors, and to welcome back our seed investors @paradigm — Hayden Adams ?? (@haydenzadams) August 6, 2020
The follow-on from their ~$1M seed round comes with participation from leading DeFi funds USV, Paradigm, Version One, Variant, Parafi Capital, SV Angel, and A.Capital.
With approximately $1.5B in volume in July alone, Uniswap is quickly turning into a real contender for crypto exchanges at large. Many have come to recognize Uniswap as the primary market for DEX liquidity, with many projects like UMA choosing to first distribute their tokens by seeding a Uniswap pool.
Uniswap did $126M volume last 24 hours. This is 1/3 of Coinbase. 1/2 of Kraken. More than Gemini, Polo, and BINANCE US combined.
Pretty incredible TBH.
— Qiao Wang (@QWQiao) July 31, 2020
The closing of a Series A round is set to foreshadow a wider Uniswap V3 upgrade, a lot of which is still being kept behind closed doors. However, if the V2 upgrade showed us anything, Uniswap generally packs a big punch with any and all product upgrades, and this one is sure to be no different.
Interestingly enough, the announcement of the Series A round comes just hours after the popular DeFi account devops199fan leaked the news on Twitter. (Devops199 is a historic account which activated the killswitch on the Parity wallet)
.@UniswapProtocol sold $11MM in securities on 6/5/20, congrats @haydenzadams! ???
info is publicly available in their SEC Form D filing ??
notice any other interesting EDGAR filings recently? ??
cc @Arthur_0x @DegenSpartan @Rewkang full notice ??https://t.co/j8ffLkTjCi pic.twitter.com/HAsGxfloSX — devops199fan ?????? (@devops199fan) August 6, 2020
If you thought that DeFi fans were only keeping an eye on CoinGecko – think again. With crypto exchanges like Uniswap expected to bring in $9.7M in annualized revenue through it’s 0.25% trading fee, legacy players are sure to try and capture it’s upside as one of the few DeFi products which does not currently have a native governance token.
Still, the business model for Uniswap as a company is worth touching on. With those 0.25% trading fees being allocated entirely to liquidity providers, this leaves no tangible revenue for Uniswap’s parent company (outside of liquidity they provide themselves). Our frequent readers may recall us shining light on the optional 0.05% protocol fee which, if our intuitions are correct, point to a soon-to-be included cut which flows directly back to the company.
While Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams has been very outspoken about his views on liquidity mining, one can only wonder how much more successful the project will get before sharing some of that governance with its very users.
In the meantime, be sure to stay up with Uniswap on Twitter for any and all news!
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Cooper is the Editor of DeFi Rate and a contributor to leading DeFi outlets like the Defiant and Bankless. He is active in the DAO ecosystem through projects like MetaCartel and Raid Guild where he seeks to incubate governance models and grassroots community development. He is an ambassador of Set Protocol and the Director of Fitzner Blockchain Consulting where he authors a weekly publication called Token Tuesdays. To stay up with Cooper, follow him on Twitter.
