Uniswap Labs Reportedly Raising Over $100 Million in New Funding

Uniswap Labs, the de-facto backbone of the Uniswap Protocol, is reportedly gearing up to raise a venture capital round of $100 million to $200 million.

The creator of the Uniswap Interface, Hayden Adams, is engaging with a Singapore sovereign fund, as well as crypto-focused investment firm Polychain, TechCrunch reported.

Post-fundraise, Uniswap Labs is said to be valued at $1 billion, though the final valuation could change, pending negotiations once the capital raise progresses to later stages. 

Uniswap Labs previously raised an $11 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with investors from Paradigm Venture Capital, Union Square Ventures and ParaFi also participating.

Its latest moves to seek funding likely indicates plans to further expand its offerings. 

The DeFi protocol is one of the largest decentralized crypto exchanges and currently has a market share of 47.2%, according to data compiled by Blockworks.

In recent months, the Uniswap community has been contemplating revenue generation strategies with the goal of sustaining the protocol’s long-term growth.

A proposal to switch fees gained overwhelming support from Uniswap’s community governance earlier in July, but few moves have been made since then.

The fee switch presented a pilot opportunity to test fee parameters in selected liquidity pools, including 0.05% of DAI-ETH, 0.3% of ETH-USDT and 1% of USDC-ETH — a 10% fee would be applied to that percentage of the selected pools, the lowest portion the code permits. 

And any ensuing value accrued would remain with the protocol, before governance decides on where they should be allocated.

Uniswap Labs’ decision to fundraise now may also be a mechanism to potentially mitigate the risks of the pilot. 
Uniswap community member with the pseudonymous title BJP3333 wrote earlier this year that “taking fees away from LPs [liquidity providers] should be a last resort.”

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