UNI rallies as Uniswap Labs unveils Layer-2 Unichain on mainnet

• Uniswap Labs announced the launch of its Layer-2 solution, Unichain.
• Built on the Optimism Superchain, Unichain supports interoperability across several Ethereum-native blockchains.
• UNI gained over 6% following the announcement but has since seen a correction.

Uniswap’s native token, UNI, is up on Tuesday following the Mainnet rollout of its latest Unichain Layer 2 (L2) solution. Unichain promises to offer users faster and cheaper transactions than the Ethereum L1.

Uniswap’s Layer-2 blockchain Unichain goes live

Uniswap Labs, the team behind the largest decentralized exchange on Ethereum, has introduced its own Layer 2 network.

In a press release on Tuesday, Uniswap Labs revealed the debut of Unichain, designed to help scale the Ethereum mainnet.

Unichain was first unveiled in a testnet in October, with the Uniswap team claiming that it was designed to scale the Ethereum roadmap by offering a 95% cost reduction compared to the mainchain.

Unichain leverages Optimism’s Superchain to enhance transaction speed and affordability, making it a more scalable alternative to Ethereum’s mainnet.

The press release also states that several protocols, including Uniswap, Circle, Coinbase, Lido and Morpho, have already begun building on Unichain.

Unichain’s launch comes just two weeks after the rollout of the Uniswap V4 upgrade on several Ethereum-native blockchains, including Arbitrum, Optimism and Base. 

A major update in v4 is the introduction of hooks — smart contracts that enable developers to customize various aspects of the protocol, including liquidity pools, fees and swaps. 

Uniswap Labs claims that Unichain was designed for DeFi users and developers, offering developers access to build and deploy decentralized apps.

It also allows users to integrate stablecoins into their apps while leveraging swapping and liquidity pools via its v4 platform.

Additionally, the team claims that users can bridge their tokens onto Unichain through the Uniswap wallet, create their own tokens and access new projects and apps.

UNI, the native token on Uniswap, showed signs of a rally following the positive sentiment from Unichain’s launch. The token rallied over 6% before seeing a correction in the past 24 hours. If investors see Unichain’s launch as a bullish catalyst, UNI could recover from its 30% decline in the past month.