What Is Unichain — And How Does It Relate to Uniswap?

Launched in November 2018, Uniswap (UNI) is one of the blockchain industry's earliest and largest decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms. Having pioneered the concepts of the automated market maker (AMM) and liquidity pool, Uniswap has long held the pole position among decentralized exchanges (DEXs) by total value locked (TVL) and trading activity. 

Despite these pioneering achievements, Uniswap, just as every other Ethereum (ETH)–based DeFi app, has faced its fair share of issues. Most of these are attributable to Ethereum's network congestion, limited scalability, high transaction costs and less-than-optimal block validation schedule.

Through the years of supporting Uniswap, the Uniswap Labs team has gained vast experience in Ethereum-based DeFi. They’ve put all the insight and lessons learned into Unichain, a solution aimed at replicating Uniswap's success.

In late 2024, Uniswap Labs made a pivotal move by introducing Unichain, a DeFi-focused Layer 2 network that aims to address the drawbacks of transacting directly on Ethereum. In testnet mode as of early November 2024, Unichain offers a plethora of advantages over Ethereum, including low transaction costs, cross-chain interoperability, one-second block times and a trusted execution environment that improves the transparency of transaction ordering.

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