What is Uniswap?  How is it different from traditional cryptocurrency exchanges?  And what is this UNI token that’s been rocketing up the price chart?  Well stick around, here on Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday,  we’ll answer these questions and more. welcome to Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday  where we take complex cryptocurrency topics,  break them down  and translate them into plain English. Before we begin,  don't forget to subscribe to the channel  and click the bell so you’ll immediately get notified  when a new video comes out. Today’s topic is Uniswap and the UNI token. It’s important to note that this is an advanced topic  that relies on prior knowledge of how cryptocurrencies work. If you’re new to crypto  you may want to check out additional videos  that we’ll mention and link to in the description  to get you up to speed. Now let’s get started. Uniswap is a decentralized, permissionless exchange  that allows anyone to trade Ethereum ERC-20 tokens directly  without the use of a middleman. OK...what exactly did I just say?  Don’t worry: we’re going to work through this together. To understand what makes Uniswap different,  let’s start out by taking a look at how a traditional cryptocurrency exchange,  like Kraken or Bitstamp works. To begin with, traditional exchanges are centralized,  meaning they are owned by a company  that has complete control over the exchange  and the computers that run it. Traditional exchanges are also regulated by KYC laws,  which is an abbreviation for ‘Know Your Customer’.

 

 

 

 

 These laws require each new customer  to provide extensive personal information,  including your home address and tax ID numbers  before you can begin trading on the exchange. Additionally, in order to trade on a traditional exchange,  users need to deposit money on the exchange,  basically giving the exchange control over their funds. On a traditional exchange,  when users want to buy or sell a certain cryptocurrency  they submit a “Buy” or “Sell” order. All of these orders are recorded in the exchange’s order book. Once there’s a match between a buyer and a seller,  a trade is conducted. So this is how a traditional, centralized exchange works. If you want to learn more about exchanges and trading,  you can check out our “What is Bitcoin trading” video  which we’ll link to below. Now let’s talk about decentralized exchanges,  also known as DEXs. DEXs are part of the decentralized finance ecosystem. Decentralized finance, or DeFi for short,  is a term given to traditional financial services  such as exchanges, lending services, and insurance,   that have been decentralized  through the use of Blockchain technology. If you’re not familiar with DeFi or Blockchain technology  you can also check out these two videos. We’ll leave the links in the description Now, unlike a traditional exchange  that requires a controlling company and centralized servers to operate,  A DEX consists of a set of smart contracts deployed on a blockchain. In simple terms, it’s a set of automated rules  that are executed by a network of independent computers  without any central entity controlling it. And if you want to learn more about smart contracts  and how they work,  you can take a look at our “What is Ethereum” video. Since DEXs aren’t controlled by anyone,  they can’t be regulated and are in fact open to everyone. When using a DEX there’s no need to open an account,  or go through an identification process  where you’d have to supply your personal information.

 

 

 

 

 Additionally DEXs allow users to trade directly  from their own wallets  allowing them to keep full control over their funds. A key difference a DEX has from a traditional exchange  is in the way transactions are conducted  and how price is determined. As I’ve mentioned earlier,  in a traditional exchange  buyers and sellers set their price expectations  as “Buy” and “Sell” orders inside the order book. The more buyers and sellers an exchange has,  the larger its order book  and the more “liquid” the exchange is said to be. In other words,  it’s easier to find a buyer and a seller that agree on a price  and make a trade. Imagine there are only 2 buyers and 2 sellers on a certain exchange. It would be very hard for any trade to get executed,  since it's unlikely to find two people who would agree on a price. Without liquidity the exchange is practically dead  since no trades can be conducted. It’s the same as having a shopping mall  with very few stores or and customers. There’s not a lot of business that will be done there. In fact, liquidity is such an important criteria  to determine the quality of an exchange,  that some exchanges use external services called “market makers”  that are willing to buy and sell at all times,  creating constant liquidity for the exchange. DEXs, on the other hand, don’t store any user funds  and have no order book. Liquidity on DEXs is created through liquidity pools. Liquidity pools are a shared pot of funds  deposited by the general public,  and DEXs use liquidity pools in order to fulfill “buy” and “sell” orders. People who deposit funds in liquidity pools  are known as liquidity providers or LPs. In exchange for the locked funds,  LPs receive a part of the DEX’s trading fees  in a process known as liquidity mining. Now that we’ve covered the differences  in how liquidity is provided between traditional and decentralized exchanges,  let’s talk about how the price of a certain coin is determined. On a traditional exchange,  when a seller and buyer reach an agreement  through matching orders in the exchange order book,  a trade is conducted. At that point the price of the coin is determined  until another trade is executed at a different price. In other words,  the price of the most recent trade is considered the current price  on the exchange. 

 

 

 

 

A decentralized exchange on the other hand,  doesn’t have an order book. Users don’t trade with one another,  they trade within a liquidity pool. And instead of using the last trade to determine the price,  a mathematical formula is used. This formula, or algorithm, is called an Automated Market Maker  or AMM for short. Uniswap uses an AMM called “Constant Product Market Maker Model”  to determine the price of coins on its exchange. This AMM follows a simple formula of X times Y equals K. This means that when trading, for example, Ether for DAI  the amount of Ether available times the amount of DAI available  on Uniswap’s Ether/DAI liquidity pool should always equal a constant number. Let’s break this down a bit further. Imagine there are 10 ETH and 10,000 DAI on a certain liquidity pool. As we can see, using the AMM model  this means that the number of ETH  times the number of DAI equals 100,000, this is our constant K. If I were to buy 1 ETH,  this will reduce the number of ETH in the pool to 9. Now the question remains, how many DAI will this cost. Well, the way to calculate this is to take our constant of 100,000  and divide it by the new number of ETH, 9. This would give us the new number of DAI required in our pool - 11,111. Meaning we need to deposit around 1,111 DAI to buy one ETH. As you can see the price is determined  by how much of a certain token you want to buy,  and not by how much someone else wants to get for it. By using the  “Constant Product Market Maker Model” algorithm,  liquidity is kept without the need for external market makers,  no matter how large the order size or how tiny the liquidity pool. This model makes it infinitely expensive  to consume the whole amount of a certain coin,  putting a damper on larger orders. For example, In our previous exercise,  if I wanted to buy 9 ETH it would cost me 90,000 DAI  to maintain the 100,000 constant,  making each ETH cost 10,000 DAI instead of the 1,111 DAI it would cost  to buy only 1 ETH. Of course there are other DEXs with different AMM algorithms  than the one used on Uniswap,  but that conversation goes beyond the scope of this video. Now that we’ve covered DEXs   we can focus on Uniswap more in depth. Uniswap is a DEX built on top of the Ethereum network infrastructure. It’s a set of automated rules used for trading ERC-20 tokens,  which is a term given to a certain standard of Ethereum tokens. Uniswap is the most popular decentralized application, or DAPP,  on the Ethereum platform  with hundreds of thousands of users trading on it each week. Additionally Uniswap is one of the most forked projects  in the DeFi space,  meaning people use its code to build additional applications. The first version of Uniswap started out in November of 2018. Uniswap’s V1 allowed trading of any ERC-20 token to Ether and back.

 

 

 

 

 In May of 2020 V2 was released  and the trading of ERC-20 tokens directly between one another  without first having to trade with Ether became available. In May of 2021 V3 was released  allowing a more effective use of capital  to whoever decides to supply liquidity to Uniswap. In other words  you can squeeze more “juice” out of the money you deposit  in the liquidity pool. Trading also got more efficient,  lowering trading costs compared to V2. Additional changes which we won’t go into in this video  include concentrated liquidity, active liquidity, range orders,  flexible fees and more. So how do you actually use Uniswap? Well, it’s fairly simple,  all you need is an Ethereum wallet like Metamask  which can interact with other Ethereum applications. Once you have Metamask installed on your browser,  head over to Uniswap.org, click on “Connect Wallet”,  choose “Metamask”  and now you can start trading any Ethereum ERC-20 token  that is listed. Keep in mind that since there are many people conducting trades  on Uniswap simultaneously,  the price shown when you place your order  may be different from the actual price when the order is executed. This phenomenon is called “Slippage”  and you are able to cap how much slippage  you are willing to tolerate before cancelling your order. The reason for slippage is that  every  trade on Uniswap is actually an Ethereum transaction  and it can take some time to broadcast the transaction  and get it confirmed by the Ethereum network. By the time the transaction is confirmed,  the price may have already changed. Due to its decentralized and non-regulated nature,  Uniswap supports many types of ERC-20 tokens. In fact, practically anyone can create their own token  and list it on Uniswap for free,  filling Uniswap with a wide variety of tokens  but unfortunately a fair number of scam coins as well. Just because a coin is listed on Uniswap  doesn’t mean it’s legit or has any intrinsic value. As opposed to a traditional exchange  that does extensive due diligence and research on every coin  it adds to its platform , Uniswap doesn’t. So - it’s up to you to Do Your Own Research as they say  and decide if you want to invest in a certain coin. Finally, let’s talk about the UNI token. A coin that has gradually made its way to the list of top cryptocurrencies. In September of 2020  Uniswap introduced the UNI token through an airdrop. Meaning, each person who previously used Uniswap  received 400 UNI tokens for free. Even though the UNI token has risen substantially in value  since its release,  it wasn’t designed to serve as a currency. It’s actually a governance token,  allowing whoever holds it to influence and vote on development decisions. The more tokens you hold, the more voting power you have. The idea is for the Uniswap team to gradually fade out their involvement  in Uniswap  and leave the management of the project to the token holders. So how is it that a token  that wasn’t meant to have any value rose to the top of the cryptocurrency list?  Well…it seems that the price of UNI  represents how valuable people believe that Uniswap will be in the future,  and therefore are willing to pay to be a part of its governing body. In the cryptocurrency space  it’s not uncommon for coins  that never had any intention of being used as a financial asset  to become very valuable. In the end it’s up to you to decide  if being a part of the Uniswap governing body  is worth the price of the UNI token. That’s it for today’s episode of Crypto Whiteboard Tuesday. Hopefully by now you understand what Uniswap is -  a decentralized exchange  that allows users to trade any ERC-20 token  without any intermediary. You may still have some questions. If so, just leave them in the comment section.