The decentralized exchange Uniswap, which recently surpassed Coinbase in trading volume, launched its own governance token under the ticker UNI.

Decentralized marketplace Uniswap announced in a blog that it has released 1 billion UNI tokens. They will not be available immediately, but within four years. 60% of UNI genesis supply will go to community members, and 21.51% to team members and future employees. 17.80% of tokens are reserved for investors with a four-year vesting schedule, and 0.069% will be allocated to consultants, with a four-year vesting cycle, too.

"A perpetual inflation rate of 2% per year will start after 4 years, ensuring continued participation and contribution to Uniswap at the expense of passive UNI holders," the announcement reads.

As observers on social networks note, the retroactive distribution of 150 mln UNI tokens has already begun. The tokens were sent to liquidity providers, users, and SOCKS redeemers/holders based on a snapshot ending September 1, 2020, at 12:00 am UTC.

UniSwap launched its token giveaway at 12:00 UK time today.

“With 15% of tokens already available to be claimed by historical users and liquidity providers, the governance treasury will retain 43% [430,000,000 UNI] of UNI supply to distribute on an ongoing basis through contributor grants, community initiatives, liquidity mining, and other programs,” the blog post reads.

The UNI token was listed on the two largest crypto exchanges, Binance and OKEx. Everyone who used UniSwap at least once before September 1, 2020 was credited 400 UNI (~ $1600 at current exchange rate).

Due to the distribution of UNI tokens, the transaction pool on the Ethereum network grew sharply by 25%, which led to a jump in the cost of transaction fees. At the moment, 213,000 transactions (about 40%) are expected to be processed. The average commission for a successful transaction is $30.