Trading volume surged 10x in a month—who is driving the UNI rally?
- Key Takeaway: UNI's price has doubled in three months, primarily driven by Uniswap generating real fee income following the Robinhood Chain launch, combined with a token burning mechanism (Firepit) that creates a deflationary flywheel, prompting the market to reprice the token.
- Key Factors:
- Robinhood Chain's mainnet launched in July this year. Uniswap, serving as its public AMM, has seen TVL exceed $700 million, generating $4.29 million in revenue over the past 24 hours, accounting for nearly half of the chain's fee share.
- Daily trading volume for stock tokens on Uniswap via Robinhood Chain reached $130 million, growing approximately 10x in a month, with v3 and v4 contributing almost equally.
- In December 2025, UNI's tokenomics proposal passed: burning 100 million UNI and activating the protocol fee switch. As of August 31, approximately 110 million UNI had been burned, totaling $630 million in value.
- Since August, UNI's daily burn has exceeded $400,000, with Robinhood Chain contributing nearly half. The burn mechanism is implemented via the TokenJar contract, where arbitrageurs burn UNI to extract fee assets and sell them on the secondary market.
- To avoid SEC oversight and reduce market-making costs, Robinhood adopted a public AMM to handle stock tokens. Uniswap's liquidity depth and decentralized nature made it the key venue for this role.
Original author: Mahesh, Foresight News
On August 31, UNI briefly broke through $5.40, hitting a new price high since January 2026. After dropping to $2.31 in June this year, UNI has been on a steady rebound, rising more than 100% over the past three months. During the DeFi wave of 2020-2021, Uniswap was the leading DEX protocol. However, in this cycle, it has fallen from grace, with little discussion and a price that has long been stuck in a range-bound downtrend.
What exactly has driven the market's renewed interest in UNI?
Fee Revenue of $4.29 Million in the Past 24 Hours, Tokenized Stock Daily Trading Volume Up 10x in One Month
In July this year, Robinhood Chain launched its mainnet. As of August 31, DefiLlama data shows its total TVL has surpassed $700 million.
Uniswap officially announced that its v2, v3, v4, and UniswapX have served as the chain's public mainnet AMM since day one of Robinhood Chain, with web, wallet, and API access all available simultaneously.
The latest data shows that its revenue over the past 24 hours reached $4.29 million, accounting for nearly half of Robinhood Chain's total fee revenue in the same period—second only to token launch platform Pons and far ahead of other competitors.
Token Terminal reports an even more striking figure: Uniswap's daily trading volume of tokenized stocks on Robinhood Chain has hit a new high of approximately $130 million, up roughly 10x over the past month, with v3 and v4 volumes nearly on par.
Over $400,000 Worth of UNI Burned Daily
Although the UNI token was fully unlocked back in 2024, its price has consistently underperformed.
Uniswap pools have always generated trading fees. From 2020 to the end of 2025, virtually all of that revenue went to liquidity providers (LPs). UNI was only used for governance voting. The protocol generates anywhere from hundreds of millions to over a billion dollars in fees annually, yet the token itself has zero cash flow. This is the "fee switch" debate that has dragged on for five years.
In December 2025, the long-criticized UNI tokenomics proposal finally passed its final vote, with core measures including the burn of 100 million UNI tokens after a roughly two-day voting window and the activation of the protocol fee switch.
According to the latest Dune data, as of August 31, cumulative burns stand at approximately 110 million UNI, with a total burned value of $630 million.
Since August this year, multiple days have seen daily burns exceeding 100,000 UNI, with an average daily burn value of over $400,000—of which Robinhood Chain contributes nearly half.
The UNI burn mechanism is not a simple direct buyback of UNI tokens using USDT/USDC or similar assets.
The bulk of trading fees in Uniswap pools still goes to LPs. Uniswap only takes a small cut—roughly 6% on Robinhood. That slice does not go into Labs' bank account; instead, it flows into a contract vault called TokenJar. The jar contains ETH, stablecoins, altcoins, and stock tokens—whatever fees each pool generates. Anyone who wants to withdraw assets from the jar must first burn an equivalent value of UNI.
This step is called Firepit.
Arbitrage bots monitor the net asset value of the TokenJar contract in real time, burn an equivalent amount of UNI to withdraw fee assets, and then sell them on the secondary market to capture risk-free arbitrage.
On-chain trading activity is positively correlated with the value captured by the protocol, which in turn drives more arbitrageurs to burn UNI to extract rewards, creating a deflationary flywheel for the UNI token.
In other words, the team has transformed a "company buyback" into an "on-chain auction of protocol revenue."
Dune data shows that burn figures continue to grow steadily.
To cut its own market-making costs—and more importantly, to sidestep the SEC's stringent regulations on traditional brokerages listing tokenized securities—Robinhood has routed its non-U.S. retail and stock tokens through a public AMM rather than keeping them solely in its own RFQ system. Uniswap plays a pivotal role on Robinhood Chain. Robinhood Chain's trading volume consistently translates into a net reduction of UNI supply, thereby driving the token price higher.
Uniswap has long been plagued by criticism that UNI is a zero-cash-flow token. It needs genuine external revenue to support its deflationary model, while Robinhood, in turn, needs a settlement layer with deep liquidity and sufficient decentralization to handle its stock tokens.
TradeFi and DeFi are undergoing deep convergence.
