The Uniswap Foundation plans to push the latest version of the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX) to the Ethereum mainnet in the third quarter of the year. 

In an X update on Feb. 15, the Uniswap Foundation shared the tentative launch date for the highly anticipated Uniswap V4, which the team believed will be the “most rigorously audited code ever deployed on Ethereum.” 

Currently, the development team is working on phase one, which involves completing the core code, testing, gas optimization and security enhancements. After this, the code will undergo comprehensive auditing by multiple firms, and final adjustments will be made after V4 is deployed to the testnet.

The final phase will be deploying V4 to the mainnet in Q3 – a tentative launch date that appears to have been decided after Ethereum developers announced the scheduled mainnet deployment of the Dencun upgrade.

One of the Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that will go live with the Dencun upgrade is EIP-1153, which enables transient storage. 

“EIP-1153 also opens the design landscape for Uni v4 hooks, where different functions can be integrated at points with a liquidity pool’s life cycle with low gas costs,” wrote Blockworks Research analyst 0xpibblez in a paper.

Uniswap released the draft code for its V4 upgrade last June, introducing advanced features like smart contract hooks and custom pools.

These hooks are plugins that will customize how liquidity pools, swaps, fees and liquidity provider (LP) positions interact. Developers will also be able to build on top of the protocol’s liquidity and security to create customized AMM pools through the hooks that integrate with V4’s smart contracts.

“But really, the sky’s the limit. Because each pool is now defined by more than just the tokens and fee tier, we’ll see pools of all colors, shapes, and sizes,” said Hayden Adams in a blog post last year.