Most projects wait months, years even, for a Coinbase listing, but DeFi protocol Uniswap has had its new UNI token added to the exchange's Pro trading platform just hours after launching.
- Coinbase announced Thursday morning it would begin accepting UNI deposits immediately, with trading beginning as soon as there's sufficient liquidity.
- UNI will be tradable against the U.S. dollar in all Coinbase's covered jurisdictions except New York.
- Coinbase has not yet said whether UNI will be made available on its retail-orientated platform.
- Launched in 2018, Uniswap is one of the pioneers of a new type of trading platform that uses smart contract-based liquidity pools to spot prices and facilitate trades, also known as "swaps."
- Called an automated market maker (AMM) protocol, users become liquidity providers on Uniswap by depositing digital assets into the pools, receiving interest and a cut of transaction fees in return.
- Coinbase, on the other hand, uses the more traditional order book format – where a user's trade is matched up against a list, or book, of buys and sells, and executed at the best available price.
- Uniswap announced late Wednesday it would issue a billion UNI tokens to founders, team members and the community over the next four years.
- Per the company's release, the token will be used to power on-chain governance decisions.
- A governance token that gives users a role in running the protocol might be a move to prevent a flow of tokens and liquidity going to rival SushiSwap.
- Approximately $830 million worth of crypto moved over to SushiSwap last week.
- Of the two AMM exchanges, SushiSwap is generally considered to be more decentralized.