Uniswap just removed 100 million UNI from circulation in a single on-chain transaction, executing the core of its UNIfication fee-switch proposal and hardening the token’s supply story.
An Ethereum transaction from the Uniswap UNI timelock to the 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD address shows 100,000,000 UNI sent at 20:33 UTC on Dec. 27, 2025, according to Etherscan and Whale Alert. At today’s spot level around $6.32 per UNI, the burn removes roughly $630 million of token supply, not the “about $100 million” figure some early summaries suggested.
Uniswap Labs framed the move as the formal execution of UNIfication. In a LinkedIn update, the team wrote that UNIfication “has officially been executed onchain” and confirmed that Labs interface fees now sit at zero, protocol fees are on for v2 and selected v3 pools, and Unichain revenues route into the burn path.* UNI trades near $6.32, up about 5% over the past 24 hours, with the market now forced to price a sudden 10% treasury burn and ongoing fee-driven deflation.
“UNIfication has officially been executed onchain. Labs interface fees are set to zero. 100M UNI has been burned from the treasury.”
Uniswap Labs
From multi-year fee-switch drama to a 100M UNI burn
The burn closes a governance loop that started years ago and formally began with the UNIfication proposal that Uniswap Labs and the Uniswap Foundation published on Nov. 10.* The post and matching governance thread on gov.uniswap.org laid out eight concrete actions, with two headline items for tokenholders. Turn on protocol fees and route them into an on-chain UNI burn mechanism. Retroactively burn 100 million UNI from the treasury as an estimate of fees that might have accrued if the switch had been active since launch.
Delegates delivered an overwhelming yes. Governance data and founder Hayden Adams’ public recap show 125,342,017 UNI voting in favor and just 742 voting against, a 99.9% approval rate that blew past the 40 million quorum.* The vote ran from Dec. 19 to Dec. 25, with a two day timelock baked into the proposal. Once the timelock cleared, Governor Bravo executed the batch of on-chain calls that triggered the treasury burn and flipped fee parameters.*
The Etherscan record confirms that the UNI timelock contract sent 100,000,000 UNI to the burn address in a single execute() call originating from the Uniswap governance contract.* Third party trackers like Arkham and multiple exchanges peg the dollar value in a tight band around $590–630 million at execution time, with Cointelegraph citing roughly $596 million.
How UNIfication changes Uniswap’s cash flows
UNIfication finally turns on Uniswap’s dormant protocol fee switch. Per the official spec, v2 LP fees on Ethereum move from 0.3% to 0.25%, while the protocol skims 0.05% into a dedicated fee pipeline.* For v3, the proposal sets protocol take rates at one quarter of LP fees on the 0.01% and 0.05% tiers and one sixth on the 0.30% and 1% tiers at launch, with governance able to tune those numbers per pool.
All of those protocol fees, plus net sequencer revenue from Uniswap’s Unichain rollup after Optimism’s share and L1 data costs, flow into an adapter layer that feeds an immutable contract called TokenJar. A second contract, Firepit, burns UNI whenever anyone withdraws accumulated fees from TokenJar, hard-wiring protocol revenue into supply reduction.*
The one-off 100 million UNI burn represents the retroactive part of that plan. The on-chain vote authorizes the treasury to destroy that block of tokens to approximate the supply impact that historic fees on roughly $4 trillion of lifetime Uniswap volume might have produced if the switch had been active since 2020.*
Tokenomics jolt: 10% of supply gone, deflation engine online
Before the burn, the UNI contract carried a fixed 1 billion total supply, with several hundred million tokens still sitting in treasury and vesting allocations. The 100 million burn equals 10% of that absolute cap in a single transaction. Cointelegraph reports that circulating supply now sits around 730 million UNI.*
The dollar framing matters. A “$100 million” burn reads like a modest promotional event at current DeFi valuations. Destroying 100 million UNI at roughly $6 per token lands closer to $600 million, on-chain, from the treasury’s balance sheet. Etherscan’s execution view even showed an implied value near $631 million at the moment of the transfer.*
UNIfication also changes how markets think about future supply. Instead of relying solely on unlock schedules and discretionary treasury actions, traders can now model a direct link from trading volume and Unichain activity into UNI burns. The combo of a large retroactive cut and a live fee-driven burn path pushes UNI closer to the “real yield plus buyback” model that protocols like GMX and dYdX used to attract capital, with Uniswap choosing pure supply reduction rather than direct fee distributions.
Market reaction and the next questions
UNI rallied hard into the vote as traders priced in the fee switch and the 100 million burn. Data from multiple trackers shows a 20–30% move from the initial governance announcement into the quorum reach. Since execution, UNI trades around $6.32, roughly 5% higher on the day, but still below the local peaks hit during the speculation phase.*
The supply story now looks cleaner for holders. Liquidity providers face a more complex picture. v2 and v3 LPs give up a slice of fee income so the protocol can route value into UNI burns. Competing venues that keep LP economics untouched might pull some liquidity away, which would feed back into Uniswap’s own volume and burn rate.
The governance side also shifts. UNIfication folds most Uniswap Foundation functions into Uniswap Labs and sets up a 20 million UNI yearly growth budget funded from treasury, subject to ongoing governance oversight.* That structure ties Labs’ incentives far more tightly to UNI holder outcomes than the previous interface-fee model.
For now, the hard data is simple. One executed on-chain proposal. One 100 million UNI burn visible on Etherscan. Protocol fees live on mainnet v2 and key v3 pools. UNI back above $6 with a materially lower supply and a clear on-chain path for further reduction.
