In a rare occurrence in the cryptocurrency market, Binance and Coinbase have listed UNI token the same day it was released. Other exchanges Poloniex and Kucoin have also listed the Uniswap governance token.
On Binance, the token was paired with major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Binance Coin (BNB), Binance stable coin (BUSD), and Tether (USDT). However, the exchange noted that UNI is a new token and may have “higher than normal risks.” Therefore, trading should be done with caution.
OKEx was the Most Involved
On Coinbase, UNI was paired with USDT. Notably, UNI is the first DeFi-bound token to be listed on the exchange a few hours after launch. Other exchanges that have since listed the token include Poloniex, OKEx, and Kucoin. However, among the first exchanges to list the coin, OKEx was the most prominent. The exchange activated UNI trading on its spot, swap, and margin trading platforms.
Together with the listing, something else was going down. Earlier users of the DeFi protocol were celebrating free coins from an airdrop. Anyone who interacted with the platform before Sep 1 received free 400 tokens. Liquidity providers (LPs) received extra coins depending on their history on the network. Those holding a tokenized Uniswap merchandise item(s) called $SOCKS were gifted 1000 tokens.
Generally, the community airdrop accounted for 150 billion UNI tokens that equal 15 percent of the total supply of one billion tokens. The biggest beneficiaries of the airdrop were earlier users who accounted for 10 percent, followed by LPs at 4.92 percent, and SOCKS holders received 0.02 percent of the airdropped amount.
UNI Higher than the US Stimulus Check
Apart from the listing and the airdrop, the Uniswap community had something else to smile about: the token price. While one would expect that such tokens would have a low value, data shows that a single token is worth roughly 5 dollars. As such, those who received 400 coins are holding roughly $2,000 (400×5).
“The 400 UNI that every Uniswap addressed was just airdropped is worth more than the $1,200 stimulus check the US sent to millions of Americans. It’s basically stimulus for Ethereum users,” noted a Twitter user. Note that the price is at $5.15 at the time of writing.
Others were excited that the Uniswap network has a higher 24-hour trading volume ($426M) than that of Coinbase ($348M). At the time of writing, UNI’s 24-h volume was above $3 billion while Coinbase Pro’s was at $367,705,624.
Uniswap is fighting SushiSwap
Unfortunately, some advised that the UNI fever should be taken with caution. For example, Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn.Finance (YFI), another DeFi protocol, was surprised by UNI’s launch. Cronje thinks that Uniswap is feeling threatened by SushiSwap and the token launch was a defensive attack.
However, both the amount locked in YFI and SushiSwap dived by approximately 14 percent when Uniswap saw a 7.22 percent rise within the same period.