Uniswap Taps Into NFTs as It Looks To Be Financially Sustainable

Almost half a year after Uniswap Labs acquired NFT marketplace aggregator Genie, the largest decentralized exchange revealed today that NFT trading will now be made available to all users on its platform.

Users will be able to trade NFTs across eight major marketplaces on Ethereum, making Uniswap one of the largest single on-chain marketplace for digital assets across tokens and NFTs, Scott Gray, the head of NFT product at Uniswap Labs, said.

“Staying intact with Uniswap’s brand, the interface is open source, trustless, and users have self custody over their NFTs,” Gray said.

Its new platform will enable users to explore trending NFTs and collections across different marketplaces. The tool will also include a “sweep” feature where users can purchase an entire collection of NFTs through once purchase.

The existing 15,928 Genie users will receive an initial airdrop of $5 million USDC, and gas rebates will be awarded to the first 22,000 NFT users. The gas rebates, capped at 0.01 ETH per user, will begin today and end on Dec.15 and can be claimed for 12 months between Jan.16, 2023 and Jan.15, 2024 through the Uniswap app.

Uniswap NFTs: The road to revenue

Uniswap Labs has been actively looking into new ways to generate revenue since its $1.6 billion fundraise in October.

Although Uniswap Labs received an equity valuation of $1.66 billion, a spokesperson from the company told Blockworks that in its current state, “Uniswap Labs is a pre-revenue company.”

Its latest NFT platform is not looking at immediate revenue. The company is actively looking at ways to iterate its platform “to become the best aggregator for placing offers across all these marketplaces and being able to manage inventory across all these marketplaces,” Gray said.

“A lot of capital inefficiencies in the NFT market still exist, and we have a few more months of work to solve them and move onto the next set of problems in the NFT space.”

The NFT marketplace is just one of many initiatives launched by the company. Uniswap governance has also been experimenting with implementing a fee switch, where the protocol would receive a tenth of select liquidity pool fees — cutting into liquidity provider revenue. 

The latest establishment of Uniswap Foundation, a separate entity to Uniswap Labs, is also looking at ways to provide grants to community projects that will grow the ecosystem over the next few years.

“As we consider future revenue models, we want to empower users and earn their business,” a Uniswap spokesperson said.

Updated on Nov. 30 at 9:45 am ET: Uniswap governance may implement a fee switch, not Uniswap Labs.

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