UNI, the governance token for the decentralized exchange Uniswap, has seen a significant surge, climbing by double digits over the past 24 hours to reach a local high of $3.70, its strongest performance in over a month.
As of this report, Uniswap is trading at $3.63, marking a 19.8% increase on the day and a substantial 48.4% gain over the past week, according to data from CoinGecko. This performance has outpaced both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The upward trend has boosted Uniswap’s market capitalization to approximately $2.26 billion, with daily trading volumes nearing $864 million, reflecting a wave of institutional optimism within the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.
A primary driver for this rally appears to be a research note published Monday by Geoff Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets. Kendrick projected a target of $100 for UNI by 2030, representing a nearly fortyfold increase, and set a year-end target of $6.50. He argued that traditional finance (TradFi) should perceive Uniswap not merely as a retail decentralized exchange (DEX) application but as essential market infrastructure, drawing a parallel between Uniswap and YouTube, and Coinbase and Netflix.
Kendrick further posited that Uniswap is “uniquely positioned to scale” amidst the burgeoning growth of tokenized assets in DeFi. Its neutral, rules-based automated market maker (AMM) model is expected to become the foundational liquidity layer for institutional adoption. Standard Chartered forecasts that DeFi will manage $2.7 trillion in assets by 2030, potentially increasing the trading volume within Uniswap pools by 37 times. Additionally, a planned “UNIfication” fee-switch upgrade in late 2025 is expected to burn approximately 1% of the token supply annually, reducing the total supply from 1 billion to around 895 million.
The recent surge also follows Uniswap’s launch of tokenized securities on June 12. This development allows for the trading of tokenized stocks, including those of major companies like SpaceX, Apple, Tesla, and NVIDIA, across its app, wallet, and API. Uniswap Labs described the launch as “a small fraction of what’s coming,” highlighting that over $9.1 billion had already been swapped in real-world-asset pools prior to the debut of tokenized securities on the platform.
Fundamental analysis also supports the token’s momentum. Lorenzo Valente of ARK Invest noted that Uniswap achieved a record monthly trading volume of $125 billion in October 2025. The platform has since reclaimed its leading position among DEXs, accounting for 25-30% of total volume, and generates “close to half of all gross spot trading fees in the space.” Valente also pointed out that over the past 30 days, on an annualized basis, the protocol is on track to burn roughly 2% of its total supply, suggesting the token is now “fully aligned with the protocol as the single source of value accrual.”
Risks and Future Outlook
Despite the positive momentum, UNI is trading near multi-year lows and remains significantly below its all-time high of $44.92, which was set in May 2021. Kendrick also identified potential risks, including competition from niche players and the eventual standardization of compliance rules as traditional finance participants increasingly enter the tokenization space.
The token’s current upward trend is further bolstered by BlackRock’s February decision to make its BUIDL tokenized money market fund accessible through Uniswap X. At the time, Uniswap Labs indicated that the asset manager had made a “strategic investment within the Uniswap ecosystem.”
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