Uniswap Labs Launches DeFi-Focused Ethereum Layer 2 Unichain

Uniswap Labs launched its Unichain mainnet this morning, bringing a DeFi-focused Layer 2 built on the Optimism’s Superchain ecosystem.

Uniswap Labs, the developer behind Uniswap, said the Unichain is “designed for DeFi” with an open, permissionless decentralized infrastructure. Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) on Ethereum by trading volume.

Unichain offers faster and cheaper transactions than its Layer 1, Ethereum, with block times of just one second and gas prices about 95% cheaper than Ethereum, Uniswap Labs said. Planned upgrades should cut the time to 250 milliseconds.

Building a Layer 2 will bring several benefits to Uniswap, starting with providing a better experience for users, but also providing Uniswap Labs with extra income in the form of transaction fees.

“Unichain is built differently,” said Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs, in a statement. “We’re here to make DeFi faster, cheaper, more decentralized, which is why we launched Unichain to be permissionless from day one.”

That said, Unichain is a Stage 1 rollup, retaining some centralized controls for security at this stage.

Unichain’s testnet launched in October, and has processed more than 95 million transactions, while developers have deployed more than 14.7 million smart contracts, the company said. Over 100 crypto products and protocols are already building on Unichain, including Uniswap, Circle, Coinbase, Lido, and Morpho, the company said.

Designed for DeFi

Unichain’s promise of cheap, secure and fast transactions across the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) will be a big selling point, predicted Andrew Gross, who handles technical communications for open-source block explorer Blockscout.

“That's been one of the issues with Uniswap,” he said. “In the past, transactions could be really expensive on Ethereum. Those transactions eat into a lot of the profits you might make trading. It's going to open up a lot of trading opportunities that may not have been there before, new use cases and that kind of thing.”

While Uniswap Labs has pitched Unichain as being suitable for more than just DeFi, Gross said he thought that it will end up being DeFi-focused.

“I do think it will be DeFi-centric. Moving forward I think that’s how things are going to silo up. There's going to be specific chains built for specific use cases.”

While there are a lot of niche chains now, Gross said he thought Uniswap’s name and reputation will help it break through

“I think the next wave of DeFi applications are going to flock to this chain,” said Gross.

“There are a lot of niche chains coming about right now, but I think a lot of other DeFi protocols are also going to be launched there. It's not just going to be Uniswap-specific."