Uniswap Council (UC): Season 4 Report

[AbdullahUmar]

This post provides additional operational and financial detail supporting the Season 5 Renewal Proposal. While the renewal proposal outlines the UC’s forward-looking mandate and budget request, the information below offers a deeper look into some of the UC’s activities throughout Season 4, covering deployments, incentive programs, entity oversight, governance analysis, and accounting.

Delegates and tokenholders looking for further context on any of the items referenced in the renewal can find those details here. Newly proposed mandates such as treasury management, burn bounty, and grant graduation pipeline are solely outlined in the renewal post.

Uniswap Deployments and Incentives

The UC supports operational coordination related to Uniswap v3 deployments and incentive programs by serving as an administrative and execution layer for DAO-approved initiatives. This includes facilitating cross-chain deployment workflows in coordination with ecosystem partners like Oku and Protofire, maintaining canonical references such as the ENS subdomain and official contract registry, and supporting the disbursement of incentives associated with various chains. The below details are up-to-date as of EOY 2025, at the conclusion of Season 4.

Chain Growth

Season 4 saw a clear plateau in new chain deployments as Uniswap v3 has now expanded to most large L2s and EVM L1s.

Deployments by season:

• Season 2: 7

• Season 3: 17

• Season 4: 8

Approved deployments during Season 4 organized by deployer:

• Uniswap Labs

  • Monad

• Oku

  • EtherLink

  • Nibiru

  • Lens

  • Plasma

  • XDC

  • Redbelly

• Protofire

  • Flow

The presiding approach with DAO-led v3 deployments has been one of expansion due to the relatively low downside with cross-chain growth, with the potential to establish Uniswap as the canonical DEX on the given chain. As it is difficult to ascertain which chains will, for certain, garner strong traction, it has been thus far beneficial for Uniswap to expand to as many chains as possible.

For example, there are multiple chains that Uniswap Labs has chosen not to deploy to, but they’ve been successful expansion opportunities for the protocol. Good examples include Gnosis, Plasma, BOB, and Abstract. Note that deployments completed by parties other than Labs most often reside on a third-party platform, with Oku.trade being the largest third-party venue at the moment.

Gnosis:

• TVL on Gnosis grew from $11.8M to $26.1M in 2025.

• As of Q4 2025, Uniswap became the primary DEX on the chain, supplanting Balancer’s position after the protocol’s unfortunate exploit in November.

• Without a DAO-led v3 deployment, Gnosis itself would have been in a precarious situation, and Uniswap would not have been able to capture the growth seen on the chain over the past 12 months despite end-of-year volatility.

• The summed cost to the DAO for this deployment equates to $415k

  • $250k in UNI incentives (passed August 2024)

  • $105k for Oku integration and maintenance (passed August 2024)

  • $60k for Oku maintenance (passed December 2025)

Plasma:

• Plasma was of the first stablecoin-focused chains, launching late September, garnering very strong support from various DeFi partners, investors, and liquidity providers. The UC and Oku collaborated with the Plasma team to deploy Uni v3 on the chain and attain ~$800k worth of incentives.

• Prior to the October 10th liquidation cascade, and corresponding decline in the XPL token price, this deployment reached approximately $60M in TVL, similar to TVL on chains as large as Optimism. Since incentives concluded in late November, Plasma TVL had been at a relatively steady state around $25M through EOY, sitting as the second largest DEX on the chain—behind Fluid in TVL but ahead of both Balancer and Curve.

• The summed cost to the DAO for this deployment equates to $0.

  • Plasma paid Oku for the deployment and front-end integration directly.

  • Plasma allocated $800k XPL in incentives, but Uniswap has not matched any of that.

BOB:

• Uniswap deployed on BOB in Q4 2024, immediately becoming the primary DEX.

• The deployment held $42M in TVL at EOY and hit a maximum value of $130M in December 2024 as individuals were airdrop farming.

• Since Uniswap launched, it sustained its status as the largest DEX on the chain, and for some time, the largest DeFi protocol on BOB by TVL, ahead of lending markets.

• However, recent volume for the deployment was lackluster, sitting around $200k average daily volume between August-December 2025. This has become even more steep going into 2026.

  • Compared to other BTC-focused chains like Rootstock, BOB’s overall activity started indicating significant weakness in LP and trader retention.

  • The DAO approved a total of $270k (includes Merkl costs) worth of incentives for BOB in late April ‘25, along with a $105k Oku rebate.

  • Neither of these ended up being disbursed due to the decline in the chain’s activity and unclarity from the BOB team around sustaining growth. The UC maintained communications with their team throughout the year but didn’t attain enough confidence in their plan to allocate the DAO-approved incentives. All of the above funds associated with BOB have been returned to the DAO as of February 2026.

  • Hence, BOB serves as a key example of a chain that attained transitory success, driving significant fees and volume—but only for a limited period.

Abstract:

• Uniswap v3 & v2 were both deployed on Abstract in February 2025 and have fluctuated between $7M - $30M in TVL since launch, ending the year at ~$8M.

• The deploying team was Protofire, but the primary front-end, as requested by the Abstract team, is present within the Abstract portal, giving users who utilize the chain for activities like streaming access to trading.

• This deployment is an example of how chain-white-labeled front-ends, powered by Uniswap in the backend, can help Uniswap grow.

Cost of Chain Expansion

There are, however, downsides to this broad stroke deployment strategy, primarily pertaining to management complexity introduced when turning on fee switches and expenditure of resources for incentives and integrations. This is an important point of reflection when it comes to v4 deployments going forward.

Third parties, including Oku and Protofire, have their own economic incentive for conducting deployments, which offloads some of the burden from the DAO. The UC collaborates with these two teams to oversee deployment operations in an optimistic manner as to reduce broader governance overhead. Each chain tends to sign an agreement with a given deployer, and that deployer also maintains a front-end. Deployment and maintenance costs are directly tended to in an agreement between the target chain and the deployer. The UC only gets involved in the costs associated with deployments when they are subsidized by the DAO. As of EOY 2025, the UC has disbursed a total of $720,000 to Oku for implementation and maintenance for 7 chains, with Unichain deviating from customary costs due to a discount.

Of these deployments, Blast and Taiko have now been deprecated due to lack of traction on both of the chains, but the DAO recently voted to renew maintenance payments for Gnosis, Linea, and Mantle, amounting to a total $180k expense over 12 months. Note that no new chains over the past season were subsidized by the DAO; the chains directly paid for these integrations.

Moreover, multiple chains, without DAO subsidy, have decided to cease their contracts with Oku and Protofire. These include:

• Oku

  • Polygon zkEVM

  • Moonbeam

  • Manta

  • Lisk

  • Metal

  • Scroll

• Protofire

  • Ink

  • Cyber

  • Redstone

  • Shape

Accordingly, a total of 12 chains have been deprecated at EOY. Note that deprecation here means that the chains do not presently have a front-end for accessing the v3 contracts, but of course, the contracts are still usable. The UC will maintain the registry of official contracts on this forum post for continuity purposes. Deployments like Linea and Mantle have so far been deemed by governance as promising—due to potential catalysts like ecosystem-wide incentive programs and likely sustenance based on large capital backing—so it’s worth maintaining them to be prepared for future revitalization initiatives. However, some chains, like Polygon zkEVM and Blast, have clearly been abandoned and are not worth maintaining or reexploring.

In relation to fee switch complexities, additional Uniswap deployments multiply the DAO’s fee-governance surface area. Fees aren’t toggled “globally.” They are enabled at chain-specific factory endpoints and associated message passing complexities due to the utilization of various bridges and owner/aliasing models. For example:

• OP L2s: Governance actions are sent from Ethereum mainnet through the OP Stack L1CrossDomainMessenger and executed on the target chain by a CrossChainAccount contract, which forwards the call to the Uniswap contract.

• Wormhole: Most alt-EVM L1s are deployed using Wormhole. Governance calldata is sent from Ethereum via a canonical UniswapWormholeMessageSender contract and executed on the destination chain by a Wormhole message receiver. This has been led mainly by Oku, used by Celo, Gnosis, Rootstock, Sei, Saga, etc.

• LayerZero: Proposals are transmitted through a LayerZero v1 endpoint and executed on the destination chain by an OmnichainGovernanceExecutor. This is currently only used for Avalanche. LZ is now moving towards their v2 architecture, so future LZ-based deployments may refer to v2 endpoints. This is potentially another source of complexity.

• zkSync and Elastic Chains: Governance actions are sent from Ethereum mainnet through zkSync’s canonical L1 MailboxFacet, which enqueues the call as a priority L1→L2 transaction via requestL2Transaction. The zkSync sequencer executes the message on the destination chain (zkSync Era or Elastic chains such as ZERO and Abstract), where the call is delivered to the target v3 factory contract with an L2 sender derived from the aliased L1 governance address.

• Axelar: Governance actions are sent from Ethereum mainnet through Axelar’s General Message Passing (GMP) framework, where calldata is relayed by the Axelar network and executed on the destination chain by an Axelar-connected executor or gateway contract, which then forwards the call to the Uniswap contracts on that chain. Flow and Filecoin Virtual Machine (FVM) deployments use this setup.

• Arbitrum: Governance actions are executed through an aliased L2 owner derived from the Ethereum L1 timelock, with proposals forwarded from mainnet via createRetryableTicket on the Arbitrum Inbox, carrying the encoded Uniswap calldata for execution on L2.

The result of the above is a heavier operational burden and higher coordination overhead. It may be prudent to consider implementing optimistic governance for more easily managing fees.

Correspondingly, these considerations allude significantly towards how v4 expansion will function going forward. These initiatives have primarily been spearheaded by the Foundation/Labs at the moment, with growth focusing on larger chains like Unichain, mainnet, and Base. Complexity with sustaining a hook-driven ecosystem also requires mindful expansion. For example, how much more growth is possible on, say, Rootstock, if we deployed v4? Would it make a material difference relative to the existing v3 deployment? We are remaining mindful of such considerations, especially since Oku is nearing completion of their v4 infrastructure and will soon be able to support v4 on multiple chains. This process will require further strategic coordination since Oku’s ability to deploy v4 for production requires Foundation approval. This process is likely to remain in Labs’ discretion for now especially since they’ve passed fee activation on Labs-led v2/v3 deployments already.

Chain Incentives

Over the past season, the UC has aimed to ensure that outright financial expenses pertaining to deployments were kept at a reasonable level. This strategy has been demonstrated throughout the course of 2025, contrasting notably from how the DAO approached chain incentives in 2024.

Chains that move forward with incentive deployments were first advised to match a portion of their future ask from Uniswap DAO with some of their own funds. This helps sift through which chains are worth focusing on to a deeper extent, potentially moving forward with an incentive-matching proposal.

During Season 4, the DAO saw three incentive matching proposals that completed the Snapshot phase:

July:

Etherlink proposed a 2:1 match, requesting $150k from Uniswap, while matching $300k on their end, as part of their Apple Farm campaign. The proposal did not proceed to an onchain vote as it failed the Snapshot, with 61% No votes.

• In August, Etherlink allocated $10,500 to the v3 deployment.

• Etherlink EOY TVL sat at ~$5M and was doing approximately $3M in volume daily since July.

September:

Ronin requested a 2:1 match from the DAO, with Ronin allocating $1M and Uniswap allocating $250k. This proposal passed the Snapshot phase with 55% For votes. The Ronin team decided not to move forward with an onchain vote until they get closer to the chain’s L2 migration—along with suggestions from the UC to more carefully consider matching terms so the onchain vote wouldn’t cut as close as the Snapshot vote. At the moment, there isn’t a plan to revisit these incentives.

October:

As part of the go-to-market strategy, Plasma intended to allocate a total of $3-$5M worth of XPL incentive to the v3 deployment over the course of 6 months. The team ended up allocating approximately $800k between September 25 and November 20. The UC indicated matching a portion of the XPL incentives, allotting $250k from the UC’s discretionary budget. The DAO also indicated near unanimous support for allocating an additional $250k UNI from the treasury, summing the total match from Uniswap to $500k. Due to significant fluctuations in the UNI discretionary budget and quorum uncertainties, the Uniswap incentives were delayed, with the UC not finding it prudent to allocate capital to this deployment at the end of ‘25. Plasma also cut back heavily on their chain-wide incentives, in part due to a lack of co-incentives.

Plasma demonstrated why Uniswap should be pursuing day-one deployments on high potential chains. Notably, on day two of launch, the v3 deployment facilitated $164M worth of volume, generating $540k in fees.

However, since the UC discretionary budget has now been closed out, we will not be revisiting co-incentives for Plasma under the conditions of the previous Snapshot vote.

Saga:

Although Saga’s incentive matching proposal took place during Season 3—and even though the proposal was rejected—their team allocated approximately $1.67M SAGA tokens to the v3 deployment between April and September. At EOY, Uniswap remained the main DEX on the chain and held $12M in TVL. May and June, the months with higher incentive allocations, saw between $20M - $40M in daily volume. Volume numbers fluctuated around $5M daily through July and November, tipping towards $1M in December.

• Saga paid Oku for the deployment and front-end integration directly.

• Saga has allocated $1.67M SAGA in incentives so far, but Uniswap has not matched any of those incentives.

Celo:

As far as DAO-approved incentives go, solely the Celo incentives were disbursed during the past season, between April and October, amounting to a total of $250k UNI disbursed. These were supplemented by $500k worth of CELO incentives by the Stabila team. The majority of the incentives went towards blue-chip pools, with a minority allocation given to Celo-specific pairs that included tokens like cEUR, cREAL, cGHS, cCOP, and cUSO.

By EOY, the Celo deployment held approximately $20M in TVL and had the majority DEX market share on the chain.

• Uniswap paid Oku for the deployment and front-end integration for Celo to the tune of $105k.

• Celo has allocated $500k in incentives so far.

• Uniswap has allocated $250k in incentives.

Other Chains:

Other chains have allocated smaller amounts of incentives, and they have been advised to hold off on any new incentive requests from Uniswap until they are willing to commit more resources to their deployment. Examples here include:

• ~$15k from LightLink

• ~$10k from Telos

• ~$20k from Lens

The above three tested out incentives on Metrom as opposed to Merkl. They are currently not pursuing incentive matching.

Going forward, incentives administration, in the form that they have been conducted historically, will not be dealt with by the UC. This is both in response to the new organizational structure of the DUNI and the suboptimal results incentives produce in tougher markets.

Entity Oversight and Information Liaison

Over the past year, the UC has functioned as an information bridge between the DAO and the Uniswap Foundation, primarily through the Foundation Feedback Group (FFG). The FFG was explicitly designed to improve communication and accountability as a result of the Foundation’s renewal (Uniswap Unleashed).

The purpose of the FFG was not to direct the Foundation’s work but rather to provide a structured environment in which high-context information could be shared and translated into public updates for the DAO. The Foundation was able to discuss roadmap items, ongoing initiatives, and internal constraints. Meanwhile, the UC ensured that the broader community retained a clear, aggregated understanding of the Foundation’s progress without requiring the disclosure of competitively sensitive or legally constrained details. Additionally, the FFG allowed for bi-directional communications as the UC would source and consolidate community/DAO questions and feedback as garnered through surveying and community calls, which would then be shared with The Foundation for response.

This pattern of communication, Foundation briefing followed by distilled public reporting, has proved to be functional.

It balances two competing needs:

• The DAO’s expectation of visibility and accountability.

• The operational entities need to protect proprietary, strategic, or pre-announcement information.

The UC’s role was to moderate these sessions and provide feedback on various Foundation initiatives, maintaining a public record summarizing major directional themes. It created a dependable feedback channel without imposing friction on day-to-day execution.

As the ecosystem transitions into the next stage of organizational evolution with the emergence of DUNI and the formalization of Labs’ relationship to governance as a service provider, this liaison function remains important. Historically, Labs operated without formal reporting obligations to token holders. It is, after all, a private corporation, very different from the Foundation. Decisions were communicated publicly at their discretion. Products were released as they were deemed strategically fit. Under the service provider engagement with DUNI, this dynamic shifts. While Labs must preserve its ability to operate competitively, it is now entering into a structured, compensated relationship with Uniswap governance. That relationship necessarily introduces expectations around transparent reporting and mandate alignment that go beyond ad-hoc public announcements.

With the Foundation and Labs actively exploring how responsibilities and reporting practices will be consolidated, it would be premature to prescribe a fixed successor to the FFG at this time. Instead, the UC intends to remain in communication with the relevant teams as this transition unfolds, with the goal of identifying an appropriate mechanism for ongoing information exchange. The guiding objective remains consistent with prior seasons: preserving transparency and accountability at the DAO level without introducing friction or compromising the ability of operational entities to execute effectively.

Governance Logistics Details

During Season 4, the UC conducted an analysis on the overall state of governance (Governance Logistics Improvements), instigated by the sudden loss of significant voting power among a cohort of well-known delegates. This initiative analyzed major structural pain points in Uniswap DAO governance, opening community dialogue about potential paths forward.

Core Issues Analyzed

• Extremely high quorum threshold (~$280M / ~40M UNI at the time, ~6.66% of circulating supply)—the highest dollar-value quorum among major DAOs

• Resulting low proposal throughput and frequent quorum failures

• Significant concentration of influence among a very small number of large holders

• Voter fatigue and difficulty sustaining participation for routine matters

• Security vs. usability trade-off given the size of the treasury

Main Directions Explored

1. Quorum adjustment (increase, decrease, or leave unchanged) → UC expressed the current view that the costs and risks of changing quorum currently outweigh the benefits

2. Optimistic Governance (Aragon-inspired model using privileged committees + community veto window) → Seen as the most promising near-to-medium-term structural improvement → Already partially implemented successfully for cross-chain deployments

3. Other complementary mechanisms

   1. Community Process Facilitators (CPFs)

   2. Expanded Independent Delegate Votes (IDVs)

   3. Strategic treasury delegations

Outcomes & Community Reception (as of end of Season 4 / early Season 5 transition)

• The post received a broadly constructive reception from active delegates, community members, and other governance participants

• Strongest resonance appeared around:

  • Recognition of the very high economic security provided by the current quorum (widely viewed as valuable)

  • Frustration with repeated quorum failures on meaningful but non-controversial proposals

  • Interest in optimistic governance as a practical way to reduce voter fatigue while preserving ultimate tokenholder control

• Many participants expressed a preference for exploring optimistic and economically driven models first before considering any direct quorum change

• Several commenters highlighted the need to carefully design veto thresholds and challenge mechanisms to avoid creating new attack vectors or new forms of centralization

• No strong community push emerged to immediately lower the quorum threshold

• Clear appetite for continued structured work on governance scalability

There has also been a significant change in the makeup of overall delegations. Adoption of DUNA has quelled many of the worries of larger token holders and delegates regarding actively participating in votes.

As Uniswap governance enters this new stage, maintaining a reliable view of governance risk has become increasingly important. The UC’s objective in this area is to provide neutral, data-informed visibility into emerging governance threats, power-concentration dynamics, operational risk factors that may impact governance integrity, etc.

Accounting and Financials

The accounting details in this section are up-to-date as of end of February 2026, and assumes a UNI price of $4.00. Also note that all of the account balances, along with their respective inflows and outflows, are cumulative from the establishment of the UC.

During the 2025 fiscal year, a total of 129,831,069 UNI left the timelock, of which 77.02% represented the burn executed by the UNIfication proposal. The remaining 22.98%, accounting for 29,831,069 UNI, represented outflows pertaining to expenses. Seven of the total outflows pertaining to the UC for program escrow or UC-related expenditures, amounting to 1.11% of the total 2025 expenses. Uniswap Foundation-led incentives and funding represented 93.56% of outflows, while 5.33% of the outflows were for DUNI-associated expenditures.

Similar to prior seasons, there exist multiple benefits of utilizing an intermediary escrow setup. It grants the DAO a customary venue for issuing treasury-based UNI upon the execution of an onchain vote. There are often questions around what entity a proposer should direct their capital towards, and the UC wallet helps create a structure for such an organization. The DAO can distinguish between the treasury as a whole and operating capital that has been approved for consumption by governance vote. Better accountability is also implemented when the UC is able to verify the completion of work prior to conducting disbursements. However, with the establishment of the DUNI, the intermediary nature of the UC-held funds poses legal and tax complexity. The UC is therefore taking a step back from an escrow model going into Season 5.

This season, the UC saw dollar-denominated inflows, totaling $0.89M, bringing the total UC inflow to $10.64M.

Program Account Balances

“Accounts” are effectively the prescribed balances associated with a particular program that the DAO has voted in. Accounts are considered “currently allocated” if their budget has been fully disbursed. There are a total of ten Accounts, only three of which have not been fully allocated as of end of February ‘26:

• Incentive Package

• Oku v4

• Tally Grant

Currently Allocated:

• Delegate Reward WG

• UC Payroll/Operations

• Uniswap Ecosystem Incentives Initiative

• Uniswap Treasury Working Group (UTWG)

• Uniswap Growth Program

• Forse Grant

• Delegate Compensation

The all funds associated with unallocated Accounts, as well as residual UNI surplus from allocated Accounts, have been sent back to the DUNI multisig, run by the Administrator & Ministerial Agent. Therefore, remaining funds allocated for the Incentive Package, Oku v4, and Tally Grant Accounts are to be processed by the DUNI multisig.

Correspondingly, the Discretionary Budget has also been terminated since associated funds were derived from a dollar-based surplus in the Incentive Package Account.

Incentive Package Account

Following the information from the incentive packages section, this Account is responsible for tracking three types of payments:

• Incentives for distribution

• Distribution partner integration cost

• Front-end integration cost

There are no payables pending for Merkl integrations, and the most recent $180k for Gnosis, Linea, and Mantle Deployments passed in this vote have been sent and processed by the Ministerial Agent.

Chain Incentive Notes

• Sonic cut their incentives short after distributing 40% of the $500k that they promised. In turn, we also cut off our incentives at the 40% mark, allocating only $100k of the allotted $250k. As such, the Current Balance decreased by $150k, leaving a surplus.

• Celo incentives were fully allocated during Season 4.

• Remaining Blast and BSC Incentives were put on hold for better allocation opportunities in the future.

• None of the BOB incentives were allocated.

All of the unallocated capital—285,471 UNI—from the above line items was returned to the DUNI. There is no present intention to allocate this capital for its initially intended purpose of incentive distribution.

Oku Uniswap v4

During Season 4, a vote for Oku to deploy on Unichain, as well as developing and integrating a Uniswap v4 front end, was passed. In total, $340k was allocated for this.

Of the total budget, $90k has already been paid out, with $250k pending upon future completion. There is a deficit in this account due to UNI price falling, but we do not believe we need to request a rebalance for this amount, as it is the only account in a deficit, and other accounts are able to be pulled from to assist in payables here. Similarly, funds for this account—totaling 38,800 UNI—have been sent to the DUNI and will be processed by the Ministerial Agent.

Tally Grant

The DAO previously approved to fund Tally operations and development between Q1 2025 - Q4 2026, spreading a total $500k across 8 even disbursements. The UC has paid Tally at the start of each quarter based on their plan for the upcoming quarter, along with progress and upkeep status on the previous quarter.

Five of the 8 $62.5k payments have so far been made out to Tally, with the last one—and potential future ones—being conducted by the Ministerial Agent. The UC transferred the Tally balance to the DUNI multisig in January.

Resetting with New Accounts

Going into Season 5, the UC will be requesting new budgets for upcoming programs since the UNI balance controlled by the UC presently sits at zero. All residual account balances have been fully sent to the DUNI.