Uniswap’s UNI burn hits 134,000 daily record as Adams backs DeFi, Ethereum

Uniswap’s UNI token burn program set a new daily high after 134,000 UNI were destroyed in a 24-hour period, while creator Hayden Adams said he is “extremely bullish on DeFi and Ethereum” and likened current conditions to the 2018 bear market that preceded Uniswap’s creation. The burn mechanism stems from UNIfication, a governance plan passed in late 2025 by Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation. Under the system, protocol fees are collected in TokenJar (on-chain fee-holding contracts), and anyone claiming those fees must first burn an equal value of UNI through Firepit, with the tokens then sent to Ethereum’s 0xdead address permanently removing them from circulation. The original proposal helped drive UNI from $4.95 to $9.25 within a week when it was announced in late 2025. Even with the recent activity and product releases, UNI still trades at $2.47, down more than 92% from its May 2021 all-time high of $44.97, with a market cap of $1.54 billion and circulating supply of 622.71 million. In May, Proposal 96 extended the fee collection and burn system to BNB Chain, Polygon and Celo, bringing the total number of chains using the mechanism to 11, in addition to Ethereum. Uniswap Labs also rolled out four user-facing features — in-app wallets, cross-chain swaps, portfolio tracking and multichain portfolio views — all live with zero interface fees on swaps. The company said internal research found 49.9% of new traders on Ethereum, Arbitrum and Base who swapped in 2026 made their first-ever swap on Uniswap. The protocol has $2.86 billion in total value locked (TVL, crypto deposited in smart contracts) across more than 40 chains, cumulative fees of $5.59 billion since launch, and $14.15 million in revenue directed to UNI holders through the burn. Annualized fees are roughly $882 million, with Ethereum contributing $1.96 billion of TVL, followed by Base at $416 million and Arbitrum at $198 million.