Uniswap Growth Program Updates - AlphaGrowth

Overview

The Uniswap Growth Program is pleased to provide its first quarterly update to the DAO. In this report, the Growth Program will be providing an overview of new opportunities brought to the DAO, secured grants/incentives, as well as other marketing and growth initiatives aimed at expanding Uniswap’s presence.

For more information about the program and its objectives, read more here.

UEII Key Highlights

*Note: Incentive dollar amounts are determined based on the closing date price of the outbound transfer or, if incentives remain undistributed, the current market price.

UEII Current Incentive Initiatives

The Growth Program has successfully secured over $800,000 in incentives from multiple blockchain ecosystems, including $592,024 from Optimism, $158,548 from zkSync, and $50,000 from Boba. zkSync and Optimism have already seen major impacts from these incentives, leading to increased 7d volume and TVL. Future reports will include more extensive reporting on incentive impact.

*Note: Sonic incentives were excluded from the Growth Program as the conversations were initiated prior to the program’s establishment. Additionally, information in the table was captured on January 21, 2025.

Growth Program Pipeline

Discussions are progressing with networks like Saga, Fraxtal, and Etherlink. Notably, Saga is preparing for a mainnet deployment within the coming weeks. The Growth Program is also collaborating closely with the Frax Core Team to finalize a dual DAO incentive proposal, potentially bringing Uniswap onto Fraxtal. We are also excited about initial conversations with chains like Etherlink, Ronin, and others.

Utility and Liquidity Deals

The Growth Program is actively advancing utility and liquidity partnerships to enhance Uniswap’s ecosystem. While we recognize that the current structure does not yet enable one-off treasury deals, we remain committed to sourcing these opportunities proactively so UTWG can take advantage of these opportunities once established. Notably, Compound has been secured as an official launch partner for Unichain. Additionally, Uni LP to be integrated within the Compound platform is currently on the Compound forum. Enabling users to have their Uniswap LPs as a collateral option within Compound.

The Growth Program has been working with Nerite, a fork of Liquity V2, to post an RFC and is currently receiving community feedback. This proposed pilot program aims to create a new Uni utility opportunity, to list $UNI as collateral on Nerite and use Nerite in our treasury management strategies.

It is important to note that these are not deals the DAO must directly pursue; rather, the Growth Program’s goal is to continuously present new utility and liquidity opportunities, an area where there is room for growth within the DAO. Through an iterative process shaped by the DAO’s feedback, the Growth Program will refine each opportunity to better align with the community’s priorities for utility and liquidity deals.

The Growth Program is also enhancing Uniswap’s visibility through co-marketing campaigns and initiatives such as:

The Ungovernable Podcast
Which has gathered 2,500 views for its first three episodes with Getty Hill, Erick Pinos, and Abdullah Umar. You can see the most recent episode here. Ungovernable has had 3000 views across three different platforms in the first two weeks of it’s existence. The Ungovernable Podcast and Twitter were done organically, capturing over 18k impressions. We are excited to have recently gotten the Grow Uniswap account ad verified and will be putting ad spend behind the podcast and marketing campaigns going forward.

Partner Co-marketing
The Uniswap Growth Program will be making a ‘Call to Ecosystem!’ to highlight the most exciting and valuable initiatives within the Uniswap ecosystem, especially those involving upcoming Uni V4 hooks and Unichain.

Liquidity Bootstrapping
The Growth Program is working with blockchain ecosystems to develop a proposal that will enable ecosystem projects to bootstrap initial liquidity on Uniswap.

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Thank you for sharing this. Is there a way to determine that that increase in volume is due to the incentive programs and not just market movements? Does your calculation of average volume increase attempt to strip out general market impact?

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Thanks for having me on the podcast guys!

The most important takeaway from me in this proposal is the increase in TVL and 7d volume increase from the incentives.

For Compound and Nerite, while I was against Nerite from a yield generating perspective, I think having UNI as collateral is good for people to borrow against their UNI as an additional utility. The DAO could do this too with its treasury, allowing it to access a credit line of capital without needing to sell UNI.

Thank you @alphagrowth for sharing this update. We’ve been impressed with your go-getter mindset, both here and in other DAOs, and remain very much in support of your work.

Want to echo @devinwalsh’s comment on market correlation, would be great to see some analysis on this if available.

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you would need to take the trends and growth data in there, normalize accordingly to a benchmark (can be the broad market, competitor, general volume in defi on mainnets/l2s/others), calculate historical volume rate of uniswap compared to that in period with/without incentives and in same/different market regimes, and finally infer how the volume would have been without the UEII program.

In general normalized data for different market regimes and for average market growth is what we need in any program to barely undertand even the effectiveness.

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Thank you for raising this critical question Devin. To separate the impact of our incentives from general market trends, we can normalize or baseline similar to JoJo’s feedback. This will provide a clearer view of our program’s impact.

This reporting round focused on simple volume and TVL calculations as the Growth Program is still in its infancy, but the next report will include more advanced analysis. Aside from TVL and volume, are there any additional metrics you’d like to see included?

Thank you for joining the podcast, Erick! It was a blast having you on.

We agree that UNI as collateral adds significant utility for holders and the DAO by enabling liquidity without selling assets. Are there any additional partners you’d recommend connecting with to further leverage UNI as collateral?

Thanks for sharing this information, JoJo. We will be sure to take in these valuable insights when generating improved reporting for the next quarterly report. Do you recommend using the underlying asset in dollars, ETH, or another asset for the most meaningful analysis?

when you measure volume and in general market metrics you do it in dollar terms, is the standard way to do it afaik. Should just stick to the most readable metrics and unit of measure so that at a glance is easy. In the end also what will make the difference are % measures and these are often times than not agnostic from the measurement unit.

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