Uniswap Just Gave Out a $2,000+ Air Drop to its Users
On Thursday, September 17th, Uniswap air dropped 400 UNI Tokens to every wallet that has interacted with their protocol before September 1st of this year. At UNI Token’s current price, users were gifted $2,428 per wallet they had connected. Once claimed, users can cash out their UNI for USDC or any other token on ethereum’s blockchain via the Uniswap platform. Alternatively, users may hold their UNI tokens as a speculative asset, or stake their UNI tokens in liquidity pools where they can earn a high interest rate on their staked tokens.
What is Uniswap?
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange on top of Ethereum’s blockchain. This means that the users govern the protocol, instead of a centralized entity making decisions for their users. Uniswap runs on two smart contracts which allow users to trade Ethereum or any tokens on top of the Ethereum blockchain, including ERC20 tokens. There are hundreds of ERC20 tokens that run on Ethereum’s blockchain, each holding their own values. Users can stake their ERC20 tokens to provide liquidity on Uniswap in exchange for interest. This interested is generated in two ways — through exchange fees and UNI token rewards.
What is UNI Token?
UNI token is a governance token created by Uniswap that allows token holders to vote on upgrades to uniswap’s protocol. There are currently 150 million tokens in circulation, and another 850 million tokens will be distributed through liquidity mining rewards to users who stake their ERC20 tokens on Uniswap. UNI token is currently the 34th most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap, with a valuation of over $600,000,000 just two days after UNI token was launched.
What Can I do With my UNI Tokens?
If you have any wallets that have interacted with Uniswap’s smart contracts, you’re eligible to claim 400 UNI tokens per wallet that has interacted with Uniswap. To claim your UNI, go to uniswap.exchange and click the button in the top right corner of the page. A popup will appear in blue that says “claim UNI”. You are then prompted to copy your wallet address into the search bar, and if that wallet has ever interacted with Uniswap’s smart contracts, the protocol will send 400 UNI to the wallet address inputted on their website.
Once the UNI tokens are in your wallet, you can use Uniswap’s exchange to swap UNI to any other ERC token. If you want to turn your UNI into cold hard cash, you’d want to exchange UNI tokens for Ethereum and then send Ethereum to a centralized exchange, such as Coinbase, where you’re able to sell Ethereum for cash.
If you’d rather speculate on UNI token’s value, you can keep your UNI tokens in your wallet and decide to sell them if the token appreciates in value. Alternatively, you’re able to stake these UNI tokens into liquidity pools on Uniswap, where users can earn more UNI tokens as an incentive. There is currently over 1.3 billion dollars locked into Uniswap’s liquidity pools, where 583,333 UNI tokens are distributed to liquidity providers weekly. These tokens are distributed proportionally to the amount of capital provided by these aforementioned users who stake their UNI tokens.
If you’re interested in learning more about Uniswap, I’ve linked the white paper here: https://uniswap.org/whitepaper.pdf
