UniSwap Raises $165 Million Valuing the DEX at Over $1.6 Billion

UniSwap Labs has raised $165 million in Series B funding and is set to launch NFTs and move into mobile, UniSwap Founder, Hayden Adams, has announced.

Speaking about the raise and the vision he had for UniSwap back in 2018, Adams said:

“When I built the Uniswap Protocol in 2018, it was an experiment to see if I could create something that fully embodied the values of Ethereum: transparent, secure, and accessible.

Now, Uniswap Labs is bringing the powerful simplicity and security that has defined the Uniswap Protocol to even more people across the world by investing in our web app and developer tools, launching NFTs, moving into mobile and more!” – Founder, UniSwap

The investment round was led by Polychain Capital with participation from the startup’s previous investors: a16z crypto, Paradigm, SV Angel, and Variant.

UniSwap has also recently established the Uniswap Foundation through a vote by its government community. Other than shepherding the development of the UniSwap protocol, the foundation will support an ecosystem that is growing around UniSwap, in ways that the company cannot.

Launched in November 2018, Uniswap was one of the first decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications to emerge on Ethereum. The startup pioneered the Automated Market Maker (AMM) model for decentralized exchanges.

In this model, users supply Ethereum tokens to Uniswap ‘liquidity pools’ and algorithms, instead of order books, set market prices that match bids and asks on a centralized exchange based on supply and demand. Liquidity providers enable peer-to-peer trading and stand to earn rewards.

Currently, UniSwap commands 64% of all DEX volumes, according to DeFi Llama, while its Uniswap token has over $5 billion in market capitalization.

The round now values Uniswap at $1.66 billion.