Uniswap

Uniswap is a decentralised exchange protocol for swapping cryptocurrency tokens. It runs on Ethereum and many other blockchains as a set of smart contracts, letting anyone trade tokens directly from their own wallet without an intermediary holding their funds. Uniswap popularised the automated market maker, a design that replaced the order books used by traditional exchanges. Instead of matching buyers and sellers, trades happen against pools of tokens supplied by liquidity providers, with prices set by a mathematical formula based on the ratio of tokens in each pool. Anyone can create a pool for any pair of tokens and earn fees by providing liquidity. That openness made Uniswap a foundation of decentralised finance and one of the most used applications on Ethereum. The protocol has evolved through several versions. Version three introduced concentrated liquidity, letting providers allocate capital within chosen price ranges for greater efficiency, and version four introduced hooks, which let developers customise pool behaviour with features such as dynamic fees and on-chain limit orders. Uniswap runs on Ethereum and on many layer-2 networks and other chains, where fees are much lower. Uniswap Labs builds interfaces including the web app and a self-custodial wallet, while the protocol is governed by holders of the UNI token through on-chain governance. Using Uniswap requires understanding its risks. Trades can suffer price impact and slippage on illiquid pools, network fees can be significant on Ethereum mainnet, anyone can create tokens - including scams that imitate real projects - and liquidity providers face impermanent loss when prices move. Smart contract risk exists despite extensive audits. Nothing here is investment advice. Alternatives include Curve for stablecoin swaps; Balancer for multi-token pools; aggregators such as 1inch, CoW Swap and Matcha that route trades across many exchanges for better prices; Jupiter and Raydium on Solana; PancakeSwap on BNB Chain; and centralised exchanges such as Coinbase and Kraken. Choose Uniswap when you want to swap tokens directly from your own wallet on a widely used, battle-tested protocol.