 Uniswap debuts Unichain mainnet, joins crowded ETH L2 ecosystem 
2025-02-12
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Uniswap Labs has announced the mainnet launch of Unichain, its Ethereum layer-2 (L2) blockchain. The debut marks Uniswap's expansion into the L2 market. 
According to a Feb. 11 statement, Unichain will have one-second block times, swap liquidity, and the ability to earn interest or borrow against collateral. The debut of Unichain’s mainnet is said to come after millions of test transactions and smart contracts on the testnet, which debuted on Oct. 10.
The new chain could generate nearly $500 million annually for Uniswap Labs and UNI (UNI) tokenholders by redirecting fees that would have gone to Ethereum validators.
Decentralized finance is one of Ethereum’s most popular use cases, with the total value locked on the L1 network sitting at $56.6 billion, according to DefiLlama. Solana is in a distant second position with $9.1 billion, while the Bitcoin network comes in third at $6.6 billion. 
TVL is considered one of the more accurate ways to measure DeFi activity, as it accounts for locked and staked assets.
Unichain is entering a crowded Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem, facing competitors like Arbitrum, Base, Blast, Mantle and Polygon. Some are standalone chains, while many — including Unichain — are part of Optimism’s Superchain, a collection of participant chains aimed at scaling Ethereum.
A layer-2 blockchain is a secondary protocol built on top of an existing blockchain — most often Ethereum — to improve scalability and efficiency.
According to CoinGecko, the top Ethereum L2 blockchains according to TVL are Base ($3.1 billion), Arbitrum ($2.7 billion), Polygon ($769 million), Mantle ($357 million) and Gnosis Chain ($310 million). 
As Cointelegraph Magazine reported on Feb. 5, changes are coming to the Ethereum L2 ecosystem that should solve some of the interoperability problems users have complained about, including easy crosschain swaps between L2s, trustless crosschain messaging, and unified liquidity bridges.
Uniswap Labs is participating in these changes by developing EIP-7683 together with Across. EIP-7683, a new intent standard, aims to reduce friction when swapping or trading across chains. Around 50 projects and protocols are expected to support the new standard, including Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and Polygon.