Today I saw Uniswap's official announcement (https://blog.uniswap.org/introducing-unichain) that the team will launch Unichain, a second-layer extension based on Ethereum. This second-layer extension will be built on Optimism's OP Stack. Uniswap's official statement on this is: On the one hand, this move can provide a better user experience (such as faster transactions, seamless inter-chain token swaps), and on the other hand, it will also better expand the Ethereum ecosystem. I am not too surprised by this news. I have written in previous articles: With the increasing maturity of second-layer extension technology (especially development technology), whether it is OP Rollup based on OP technology or ZK Rollup based on ZK technology, users have no big threshold to build their own second-layer extensions of Ethereum. There will be a large number of second-layer extensions in the future Ethereum ecosystem. In addition, the existing major applications, whether DeFi, NFT, or chain games, have hardly found new innovations in this cycle, so there are almost no highlights in the breakthroughs in applications, but the projects cannot stagnate, so many of them have set their sights on the construction of infrastructure---------the most typical one is to build their own second-layer extensions of Ethereum. DeFi, NFT, blockchain games, each ecosystem has projects that are constantly building their own second-layer extensions. Unichain, which Uniswap plans to build, is such a typical example. As for the reasons given by Uniswap officials, frankly speaking, it cannot be said that it is wrong, but I think it is very reluctant. If you want to achieve faster transaction speeds, in fact, the DEXs that Uniswap currently deploys on the existing second-layer extensions can already meet the current needs. Although building a dedicated chain and further optimizing transactions on your own chain may achieve better results, I doubt how much the improvement in that effect will help improve the user experience. Let's talk about liquidity. I think that with Unichain, it will only further divert Uniswap's liquidity on the Ethereum mainnet, further leading to the fragmentation of liquidity. In this case, no matter how good the cross-chain tool is, it may not provide a better experience than the original liquidity. As for the expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem, I don't see how much effect it will have.After all, Uniswap is a project that has existed in the Ethereum ecosystem for a long time. It builds its own second-layer extension, which does not bring too much new traffic. It just imports part of the original traffic from the main network or other second-layer extensions to this new second-layer extension. This does not seem to be an expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem. One possible benefit of building Unichain is that it may bring new empowerment to the UNI token: in this second-layer extension, if the UNI token can be used as a (POS) collateral for the decentralized sorter, then the UNI token can play a greater role in the entire Uniswap ecosystem. This is at least more down-to-earth and more practical than the original simple governance function. Overall, I think this step of Uniswap seems mediocre, neither brilliant nor bad. In the entire DeFi ecosystem, Uniswap is not the first project to build its own dedicated chain. Before it, there was dYdX. But whether in terms of liquidity or influence, dYdX cannot compare with Uniswap. Therefore, this step of Uniswap is likely to bring a strong demonstration effect to the entire DeFi ecosystem. Those DeFi projects (especially classic DeFi projects) that have been unable to find a way out in application innovation but do not want to stand still are likely to follow Uniswap's footsteps and launch their own second-layer extensions.
I'm afraid this is one of the few "innovations" that these projects can make in the current ecosystem.
