Decentralized exchange Uniswap has raised $165 million in Series B funding led by crypto investment firm Polychain Capital.
The latest round of funding puts Uniswap at a $1.66 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on Thursday. The investment round, led by Polychain, also saw participation from high-profile investors such as a16z, Paradigm, SV Angel and Variant.
“When I built the Uniswap Protocol in 2018, it was an experiment to see if I could create something that fully embodied the values of Ethereum: transparent, secure, and accessible. Since then, it has grown and evolved in ways I never imagined,” said Uniswap founder Hayden Adams in an Oct. 13 blog post.
“It’s supported $1.2 trillion in trading volume to date and has become critical public infrastructure for exchanging digital value,” he added.
Four years into its creation, Uniswap now accounts for 57% of all trading volume across DEXs, as per data from DeFi Llama. The platform’s dominance was further evidenced earlier this year when data from Kaiko Research revealed that its daily trading volume equalled that of Coinbase earlier this year.
Clara Medalie, Kaiko’s head of research, noted that this “strong shift in market structure” came as a result of Ethereum’s transaction fees dropping to their lowest level since 2020 and DEXs facilitating billions in stablecoin swaps.
“Yet, DEXs still account for just a fraction of total CEX volume.Compared with just the top 3 CEXs (Binance, FTX, and Coinbase), Ethereum-based DEX market share in June was only 8%,” said Medalie in a July tweet.
