Major decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap (UNI) remains in the early stages of raising significant funding to expand its decentralized finance (DeFi) offering, according to a new report.
On September 30, TechCrunch reported that Uniswap Labs, a DeFi startup contributing to the Uniswap protocol, is working with a number of investors to raise $100 million to $200 million in capital.
The report notes that the startup is working with investors such as Polychain and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund for an upcoming funding round, citing two anonymous people familiar with the matter. According to the report, Uniswap will be worth $1 billion, but the terms of the deal are subject to change as the round has not yet been finalized.
The new funding is said to be aimed at giving Uniswap more DeFi tools and non-transferable token (NFT) offerings. At the time of writing, Uniswap has daily trading volume of $1.1 billion, or about 57% of all trading on global DEXs, according to DefiLlama. In comparison, Curve, the second largest DEX after Uniswap in terms of volume, has a daily volume of around $205 million.
Top five DEXs by daily trading volume. Source: DeFi Lama
“Our mission is to make ownership and sharing public,” said Mary Katherine Lader, Chief Operating Officer at Uniswap Labs. “If you can turn on the ability to share value and get people to join the community and share value with your project, your company or your organization, that’s a powerful way to let more people share that property,” she added .
Uniswap Labs declined to confirm or deny a report about the startup’s growth plans.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, Uniswap is in talks with several NFT lending protocols, pursuing ambitious plans to address liquidity issues and “information asymmetries” around NFTs. The Ethereum-based DEX shows an upward trend despite this year’s bear market.
Related: Pantera Plans to Raise $1.25B for Second Blockchain Fund: Report
Launched in 2018, Uniswap completed its first ever funding round from US cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm in 2019. The company also completed a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2020 with additional investments from companies such as Paradigm, USV, First Edition, Variable, Parafi Capital.
