After years of scaling challenges, the decentralized exchange is now capitalizing on efficiency gains across Layer 2 ecosystems
Uniswap has officially become the first decentralized exchange to surpass $3 trillion in lifetime trading volume.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams posted news of the milestone today on X alongside a Dune Analytics chart documenting the achievement
Uniswap is the first DEX to $3T volume 🦄
— Hayden Adams 🦄 (@haydenzadams) May 12, 2025
Bet its the first to 10
Grateful to everyone who swapped along the way as we decentralize the global finance system 🌐 pic.twitter.com/945Ab0Jpsl
The milestone comes amid sustained monthly activity and a series of technical upgrades aimed at improving speed, cost, and user experience.
Despite reaching this historic milestone, Uniswap’s total value locked (TVL) remains significantly below its 2021 high, with around $4.8 billion currently secured, less than half of its former peak.
This mirrors a broader pullback in the decentralized finance space, where overall TVL has dropped to roughly $117 billion from a 2021 high of $174 billion, according to DeFiLlama.
Uniswap’s native token, UNI, is up 1.4% on the day and more than 40% over the past week. Still, it remains down more than 80% from its May 2021 all-time high of $44.92.
Protocol upgrades and Layer 2 expansion drive Uniswap’s continued growth
Uniswap’s recent progress has been driven in part by major infrastructure improvements. Uniswap v4, launched in January 2025, introduced advanced trading features and lower gas costs.
In February, the exchange launched Unichain, a custom Layer 2 network built on the OP Stack, which has already processed over $4 billion in trading volume.
The platform’s monthly trading activity has remained robust, with volumes exceeding $150 billion every month in 2025. However, fee revenue has seen a recent decline, from about $150 million in January to just over $60 million in April.
Following Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade on May 7, Uniswap also implemented support for EIP-7702, as Hayden Adams shared on X.
This Ethereum Improvement Proposal allows traditional wallets to temporarily act like smart contracts, enabling transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and enhanced recovery features. All without requiring full migration to smart contract accounts.
