Author: Nancy, PANews
Arc mainnet launched with a scorching first day, once drawing plenty of attention from the market, but it still couldn’t escape the “one-day wonder”行情. In this brief on-chain celebration, Uniswap caught the traffic and emerged as the winner.
From Robinhood Chain to Arc, the growth momentum brought by new chain traffic is becoming an important driving force behind Uniswap’s recent growth. Meanwhile, v4 is accelerating to catch up with v3 and is gradually becoming a key force in Uniswap’s expansion of its liquidity footprint.
Tapping into the Robinhood Chain tailwinds, Uniswap then captures the Arc traffic.
Over the past month, UNI has put on a strong rally, with a cumulative gain of 108.9%, rising from $3.2 to $6.9. Even though the broader crypto market has seen a recent pullback, UNI has still moved higher against the trend. Behind the continued rise in coin price, beyond improving market sentiment, Uniswap’s steadily growing trading volume and protocol revenue have become important fundamental support.
DeFiLlama data shows that over the past month, Uniswap processed cumulative trading volume of more than $79.5 billion—more than the combined同期交易量 of three DEXs, PancakeSwap, PumpSwap, and Aerodrome, in the same period. Just in the past 24 hours, Uniswap’s trading value was also close to $3.86 billion, several times higher than second-place PancakeSwap.
The continued growth in trading volume also directly drives an increase in Uniswap’s protocol revenue. DeFiLlama data shows that over the past quarter, Uniswap protocol revenue reached $23.15 million, and in the past 30 days it was $5.26 million, topping the DEX revenue leaderboard.
Currently, Robinhood Chain has become the main driver of Uniswap’s recent revenue growth. For instance, using September data as an example, this month Robinhood Chain contributed about $6.48 million in protocol revenue to Uniswap, accounting for 65.5% of total revenue in the same period. Although revenue from Robinhood Chain has declined from earlier peaks as the Meme trading frenzy cools and some high-fee pools撤出, Uniswap’s overall protocol revenue has not shown any clear downturn.
And after the fee switch on Robinhood Chain was activated at the end of July, the UNI burn rate accelerated significantly. Dune data shows that in less than two months, the amount of UNI burned contributed by Robinhood Chain already accounted for 19.3% of the total burned amount. Looking at single-day data, this share is even higher: on September 17, the UNI burn amount from Robinhood Chain made up half of that day’s total burns—far higher than on other networks such as Ethereum and Base.
With liquidity and a user base from top-tier DEXs, Uniswap has also become a preferred合作 target when new chains compete for traffic. On the first day of Arc mainnet launch, Uniswap announced full integration with Arc and became its chosen first DEX. As trading activity heated up rapidly after Arc went live, Uniswap also gained a new entry point for trading traffic.
Dune data shows that on September 16, Uniswap’s trading volume on Arc exceeded $410 million. By comparison, on the first day of Uniswap’s mainnet launch on Robinhood Chain, trading volume was about $70.5 million. Looking only at the first day of mainnet launch, Arc brought noticeably more traffic to Uniswap than Robinhood Chain did. However, this Arc trading frenzy brought Uniswap more incremental traffic: because Uniswap has not yet activated the fee switch on Arc, this portion of trading volume cannot be converted into UNI burns at the moment.
At the same time, as Arc ecosystem tokens generally see significant pullbacks, on-chain liquidity has also declined. Whether the short-term trading hype can continue remains uncertain. For Uniswap, whether Arc can further convert from a short-term traffic entry point into stable trading volume and sustained revenue—like Robinhood Chain—still needs verification through subsequent market performance.
New-chain traffic boosts V4 growth; leaked Hook玩法 reportedly carries malicious risk
Uniswap has returned to the center of on-chain liquidity competition, and the rise of V4 is becoming an undeniable driving force. Among them, Hook—one of V4’s core innovation mechanisms—is also gradually becoming an important growth point for Uniswap.
Blockworks data shows that Uniswap v4 is continuously narrowing the transaction-volume gap with v3. Its latest weekly transaction-value share has risen to 48%, approaching v3’s 52%. For fee revenue, v4’s weekly fee revenue share has also increased from 8% at the end of July to 25%, while v3 during the same period fell from 87% to 67%.
The penetration speed of V4 on new chains is also worth watching. On Robinhood Chain, v4’s weekly trading volume share has reached 42%; on Base, it is 11%; while on Arbitrum and Optimism, it is 18% each. Even for Arc, which just launched, v4’s contribution share to daily trading volume is 29.7%.
Beyond market share continuing to rise, the asset structure of v4 trades is also changing. In July, v4 trading mainly focused on Meme coins, stablecoins, and L1 and L2 tokens; by August, stablecoins, tokenized assets, and Meme coins became the main trade types, with Meme coins’ trading share declining compared with the previous month. Stablecoins continue to occupy an important position in v4 trading. The reason is that this version’s underlying execution efficiency and fee design better match stablecoin trading needs.
As the v4 version expands rapidly, Hook trades are also accelerating. Blockworks data shows that currently most v4 trading activity still comes from regular liquidity pools, but Hook-related trades have been steadily rising since August, now reaching 44% share—up from previously single-digit levels.
Hook allows developers to tailor dynamic fees, token issuance mechanisms, RWA and permission pools, and other features for liquidity pools based on different assets and trading scenarios. Compared with v3’s relatively fixed fee configuration, v4 offers more flexible trading mechanisms, enabling liquidity pools to be customized for specific scenarios.
Robinhood Chain is one example. As an L2 focused on tokenized stocks and other assets, its cumulative trading volume on Uniswap v3 and v4 reached $24.3 billion and $23.35 billion respectively, putting their scale quite close to each other. In the latest weekly trading volume, v3’s share is 58% while v4 is at 42%; compared with the initial launch period, the gap between the two shares is narrowing. This also suggests that v4’s growth is not only due to version iteration driving trading migrations, but is also related to the emergence of new chains, new assets, and customized trading needs. As more assets and trading scenarios move on-chain, the Hook mechanism will further expand the liquidity scenarios Uniswap can support.
However, as the application scale of v4 and Hook expands, related security risks have also begun to draw attention. In a recent post, the 0x protocol stated that it has observed a significant increase in malicious Uniswap v4 Hooks. Such Hooks may show favorable prices during the quotation request stage, but change the actual execution price at transaction settlement, misleading aggregators, wallets, and trading applications—and ultimately harming users’ interests.
0x states that this year it routed 81.92 million transactions, with total transaction volume of $42.67 billion; around 70% of these transactions involve Uniswap liquidity. The protocol conducted static analysis, dynamic analysis, and trade-data observation on 84,163 Hooks across six chains, and based on that determined that only 19.4% are safe Hooks, 54.2% are classified as malicious, and another 26.4% may involve malicious behavior.
The protocol also points out that some malicious Hooks may differentiate quotation requests from real transaction scenarios by detecting the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment or using random fee mechanisms. This means the price users see during the quotation stage may not be honored at settlement; the actual value of assets received could be up to 50% lower than the quoted price. To address this issue, 0x says it has taken advanced detection measures and liquidity-pool reviews to prevent relevant pools from entering its routing system, and it also reminds routers, applications, and users to check whether the quoted and actual execution results are consistent.
In response, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams said that the so-called “routing to bad Hooks” problem is a matter of improper technical handling, and that the team can seek assistance to address it. He also emphasized that Uniswap v4 Hooks have already unlocked substantial innovative potential and recommended that developers use the Uniswap API. He explained that the Uniswap API supports fetching the best market prices, avoiding malicious Hooks, and connecting to all of Uniswap’s liquidity without charging additional routing fees. In addition, the API supports cross-chain swaps and integrates external liquidity through aggregator Hooks, further expanding it into a full aggregator.
From an increase in v4 trading share to the continued growth of Hook trade proportion, Uniswap is expanding into new-chain and new-asset markets through more flexible liquidity mechanisms. But as customization features become increasingly rich and asset boundaries expand further, balancing innovation and safety will be a challenge Uniswap will need to face.