Uniswap (UNI) Climbs Over 19% in a Week to Solidify its Dominance in DeFi

Over the past week, no top 10 cryptocurrencies have performed better than Uniswap (UNI), one of the leading decentralized exchanges (DEX) in the market. UNI, the governance token of the exchange, has witnessed a 19% boost in the past week crossing the $21-dolar mark and setting itself up for a potential run to $30 soon.

As of writing, UNI has climbed 3.7% in the past 24 hours to $21.47, according to Coingecko, which saw the coin bust into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization – displacing Binance Coin (BNB). The coin is also registered a 19% increase in the past week but is still 8.7% down from the last 30 days’ price.

Despite the meticulous rise, UNI is still way below its all-time high price of$44.92 set on May 3, two days before the launch of its upgraded version, UniswapV3. With the rest of the market still recovering from the flash crash caused by Tesla’s decision to stop accepting Bitcoin, UNI’s price trajectory looks better than most of the decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens.

Uniswap (UNI) leads the DeFi world

Uniswap is one of the most popular decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on the market, allowing users to swap Ethereum-based tokens without a centralized intermediary. The platform also allows users to lock their funds in ‘liquidity pools’ and earn rewards in fees generated by transactions on the platform.

The weekly jump in UNI’s price sees it solidify its position as the most dominant DeFi token in the market today with 14.6% of the total DeFi market capitalization (or 0.76 percent of the total crypto market cap).

As alluded to, UNI is currently the tenth largest cryptocurrency with a total market cap of $11.15 billion. However, AAVE, a decentralized lending protocol is catching up with UNI’s exploits – having recorded a 32% increase in the past 7 days.

According to DeFi Pulse, Uniswap has $5.48 billion in locked assets in liquidity pools on the platform, making it the second-largest DEX after Curve Finance with $8.10 billion in total locked assets value. AAVE tops the list in total locked assets value with $10 billion worth of tokens locked on the platform.