Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange protocol that lets people swap tokens directly from their own crypto wallets, without a company or broker holding their funds. It is built for crypto traders, investors and liquidity providers who want to trade tokens or earn fees by supplying liquidity, across Ethereum and a number of other blockchain networks.
Instead of matching buyers and sellers through an order book, Uniswap works as an automated market maker: smart contracts hold pools of paired tokens, and prices adjust algorithmically as people trade against those pools. Anyone can become a liquidity provider by depositing a pair of tokens into a pool, and in return earns a share of the trading fees generated by swaps that pass through it. Trades settle directly onchain and stay self-custodial, so funds move straight between a user's wallet and the pool's smart contract. The protocol is deployed across networks including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche and BNB Smart Chain.
Uniswap is free and open to use with no account or subscription required; anyone with a compatible wallet can connect and start swapping. Costs come from the underlying blockchain network's gas fees plus a small swap fee, set per pool, that is paid to liquidity providers rather than to Uniswap itself.
Listed 1 month ago by MakerVote editors · Updated September 2026 · 6 clicks
