Uniswap Token [UNI] Frenzy Commences Following Coinbase & Binance Listings on Launch

Decentralized exchange Uniswap has launched its highly anticipated native token, UNI, sparking off a DeFi farming frenzy that is bringing the Ethereum network to a crawl under high fees.

A few hours ago, Uniswap made an announcement that it was opening four ETH based liquidity pools and will be rewarding yield farmers with its own UNI token. In an effort to claw back some liquidity from the SushiSwap protocol, Uniswap has now become the center of attention in the DeFisphere.

The four pools that will be eligible for UNI earnings will be ETH/USDT, ETH/USDC, ETH/DAI, and ETH/WBTC. The announcement added that 60% of the UNI genesis supply is allocated to Uniswap liquidity providers, or ‘community members’, with 15% of that going to those who used the platform before September 1. 150 million UNI can already be claimed by historical users and SOCKS holders – tokens that entitle buyers to a real pair of limited edition socks.

The initial liquidity mining program will go live on Friday, September 18 2020 12:00am UTC, running until November 17. A rush to deposit collateral has ensued as the UNI frenzy commences.

Major Exchanges Listing UNI

Binance was the first to list UNI, just an hour or so after the announcement was tweeted as it scrambles to latch on to anything DeFi related. The following pairs will be available on the exchange from September 17, 03.00 UTC; UNI/BTC, UNI/BNB, UNI/BUSD, and UNI/USDT.

Following up, Binance added a UNI/USDT margined perpetual contract with up to 50x leverage opening on September 18.

OKEx then followed suit with its own announcement offering the following trading pairs; UNI/USDT, UNI/ETH, and UNI/BTC.

Coinbase Pro was the latest to jump on the UNI bandwagon with its announcement that trading will begin on Thursday, September 17, if liquidity conditions are met.

Our UNI-USD order book will now enter transfer-only mode, accepting inbound transfers in supported regions. Orders cannot be placed or filled. Trading will begin on September 17, if liquidity conditions are met. https://t.co/2SGc6UyoS3

— Coinbase Pro (@CoinbasePro) September 17, 2020

At the time of writing, UNI was trading at just over $3 according to Uniswap.info, but this one is expected to go much higher considering the hype surrounding it at the moment.

Gas Fees to The Moon

One drawback of such demand, for Ethereum users at least, is that network fees have surged again, quadrupling over the past few hours from 250 gwei to over 1000 in some cases.

This is fine… pic.twitter.com/ytA4ttifr9

— Hudson Jameson (@hudsonjameson) September 17, 2020

The crypto community initially stated that that demand and the new ETH pools were a good thing for Ethereum, but those trying to use the network at the moment are faced with huge fees or a very long wait.