UNI rose about 15% over the past 24 hours, outpacing bitcoin’s 4.7% gain and ether’s 8.5% gain, as investors reacted to a Uniswap governance vote aimed at expanding the protocol’s revenue capture across multiple layer-2 networks.
If approved, the proposal would expand the so-called fee shift to eight additional chains and replace the current pool-by-pool model with a tier-based v3 system that enables fees across all liquidity pools by default.
Fee shifting is the mechanism that redirects a portion of the platform’s trading fees to the protocol box itself from liquidity providers. This collected fee revenue is then used for UNI token buybacks, burns and treasury growth, establishing a direct link between the platform’s trading volume and UNI’s market capitalization.
A single government decision is adding $27M in annual revenue to Uniswap.
Since the first UNIfication proposal was passed, protocol fees collected have already enabled $5.5M+ in UNI burns ($34M on an annualized basis). So what kind of impact could expand this to eight more… pic.twitter.com/GjEJbJ0S8b
— Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) 25 February 2026
Some estimates suggest the change could add about $27 million in annual revenue on top of the roughly $34 million already generated and used to fuel UNI, marking one of the most significant shifts in Uniswap’s token economy since fees were reintroduced late last year.
The governance proposal, split into two onchain votes due to transaction limits, will enable protocol fees across multiple blockchains. It also introduces a new v3OpenFeeAdapter that applies protocol fees uniformly across liquidity pools based on their fee level, rather than requiring management to activate pools individually.
The change would make protocol fee registration automatic for all new v3 pools, reducing manual intervention and potentially expanding revenue collection across long-tail trading pairs.
Since the first phase of the rollout of the fee change at the end of last year, Uniswap has already burned more than 5.5 million USD of UNI, which implies an annual pace of about 34 million USD at the current level.
The increase comes as crypto markets widened, with bitcoin up around 4-5% and ether up around 8% over the same period.
Still, the long-term impact will depend on whether higher protocol fee capture affects Uniswap’s competitiveness for liquidity on layer-2 networks, where fee-sensitive traders and market makers may migrate to alternative venues.
After years of generating trading volume without meaningful token holder income, recent quarters show that the protocol is starting to sustain revenue.
In Q1 2026, Uniswap recorded roughly $3.12 million in gross profit, according to DeFi Llama data, compared to effectively zero in previous periods.
The change follows the gradual activation of the fee switch at the end of last year, which redirected part of the trade fees towards UNI burns.
If passed, the vote would cement Uniswap’s transition to a cross-chain monetization protocol, where UNI burns are increasingly tied to overall trading activity beyond Ethereum.
