Liquidity providers deposit funds into Uniswap and receive trading fees from traders (supply-side fees).

Uniswap is a non-custodial exchange protocol built on Ethereum. Uniswap was founded by Hayden Adams and launched in 2018.

UNI tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They do not currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue). Uniswap's investors include Paradigm, a16z, USV, etc.

governance

github

twitter

discord

etherscan

website

Exchanges (DEX)

Uniswap

# Uniswap Expenses Methodology

## 1. Overview

The total cost incurred by Uniswap to operate its business is measured by Expenses. Included in this metric are asset incentives paid to supply-side users and cost of revenue associated with network operations. Liquidity mining rewards distributed to Uniswap V2 pools and campaign incentives distributed via Merkl for Uniswap V4 are included in this metric. Additionally, sequencer fees and revenue-sharing commitments with Optimism for Unichain are accounted for as operating expenses.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `RewardPaid` events from `StakingRewards` contracts and `CampaignCreated` events from `Univ4MerklRouterOracle` contracts on Ethereum, and transaction execution data on Unichain
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds and asset metadata

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Uniswap V2 liquidity incentives

- **Purpose**: Capture rewards paid to liquidity providers in Uniswap V2 pools
- **Logic**: `RewardPaid` events are parsed from `StakingRewards` contracts on Ethereum. These events are filtered to include only specific incentive accounts, including DAI-ETH, ETH-USDT, WBT-ETH, and USDC-ETH. The reward amounts are extracted, normalized by decimal precision, and converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (timing), `amount` (incentive quantities), `token_address` (asset identification)

### Component B: Uniswap V4 Merkl campaign incentives

- **Purpose**: Capture incentives distributed to Uniswap V4 pools via Merkl campaigns
- **Logic**: `CampaignCreated` events are parsed from `Univ4MerklRouterOracle` contracts on Ethereum. The reward asset address, campaign start date, campaign duration, and total reward amount are extracted. The daily incentive amount is calculated by dividing the total campaign amount by the duration in days. This daily amount is then distributed evenly across each day of the campaign's active duration, normalized by decimal precision, and converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (timing), `amount` (campaign total), `duration` (campaign length), `token_address` (asset identification)

### Component C: Unichain sequencer cost of revenue

- **Purpose**: Calculate the operating costs and revenue-sharing expenses associated with Unichain sequencer operations
- **Logic**: Transaction execution data on Unichain is parsed to calculate gas fees. The L2 gas fee is calculated by multiplying gas used by gas price, and the L1 gas fee is calculated by multiplying L1 gas used, L1 gas price, and the L1 fee scalar. Both fee components are normalized by decimal precision, summed to determine total fees, and converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds. For periods prior to December 27, 2025, 100% of these fees are classified as cost of revenue. For periods on or after December 27, 2025, a 15% allocation is applied to represent the revenue-sharing agreement with Optimism.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` (timing), `gas_used` (execution gas), `gas_price` (gas price), `l1_gas_used` (L1 data gas), `l1_gas_price` (L1 gas price), `l1_fee_scalar` (L1 fee scalar)

### Component D: Expenses aggregation

- **Purpose**: Combine all cost components to calculate total expenses
- **Logic**: The daily USD values of Uniswap V2 liquidity incentives, Uniswap V4 Merkl campaign incentives, and Unichain sequencer cost of revenue are aggregated. A daily time series is generated, and any gaps in the daily data are filled with zeros.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (timing), `expenses` (aggregated costs)

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total project operating and incentive expenses.

UniswapUNI

Expenses

Expenses

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown