- Uniswap’s new L2, Unichain, has been announced, and it’s expected that it will generate US$500M in annual revenue.
- According to the announcement, Unichain is meant to make DeFi “faster, cheaper, and more decentralized”.
Uniswap has finally launched Unichain, its brand new layer-2 (L2) chain designed to enhance the workload and speed on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet.
As per a Feb.11 post, Unichain features one-second block times, swap liquidity, and options for earning interest or borrowing against collateral.
According to Uniswap Labs founder and CEO Hayden Adams, Unichain aims to make DeFi “faster, cheaper, and more decentralized”:
Unichain is built differently […] We’re here to make DeFi faster, cheaper, more decentralized, which is why we launched Unichain to be permissionless from day one.
Hayden Adams, Uniswap Labs founder and CEOThe mainnet launch follows months of testing, with millions of transactions and smart contracts processed since the testnet debuted on Oct. 10.
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Unichain is part of Optimism’s Superchain, a collaborative framework designed to scale Ethereum. But it enters a very competitive market with L2s such as Arbitrum, Base, Blast, Mantle and Polygon, with projects like Base leading with US$3.1B (AU$4.93B) in total value locked (TVL).
Uniswap expects Unichain to generate nearly US$500M (AU$794M) annually for Uniswap Labs and UNI token holders by redirecting transaction fees that would have otherwise gone to Ethereum validators.
L2s Gain Revenue Edge Over Ethereum in DeFi
However, there have been concerns that L2s may take away market capitalisation from Ethereum, as they become a dominant force in decentralised finance (DeFi) in terms of revenue generation, according to VanEck’s Head of Digital Asset Research, Matthew Sigel, who stated L2s are taking a bigger share from Ethereum:
The actuals (revenue models) are currently 10:90 in favor of L2s (past 4 months of data).This is a major change and shows L2s are taking more value from Ethereum.
Matthew Sigel, VanEck Head of Digital Asset ResearchThe Ethereum ecosystem still dominates in TVL, with around US$56.6B (AU$88B), while competitors like Solana and Bitcoin trail behind with US$9.1B (AU$14.4) and US$6.6B (AU$10.46), respectively, according to DefiLlama.
Uniswap Labs is also contributing to improved L2 interoperability by co-developing EIP-7683, a new intent standard to enable seamless cross-chain swaps, trustless messaging, and unified liquidity bridges. Around 50 projects, including Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and Polygon, are expected to adopt the standard, further enhancing Ethereum’s multi-chain ecosystem.
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