UNI soared about 15% in the past 24 hours, outperforming bitcoin’s 4.7% gain and ether’s 8.5% rise, 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 change to eight additional chains and replace the current pool-by-pool model with a tier-based v3 system that activates 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’s treasury itself from liquidity providers. This captured 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 value.
A single governance decision is poised to add $27 million in annualized revenue to Uniswap.
Since the adoption of the first UNification proposal, collected protocol fees have already generated over $5.5 million in UNI burns ($34 million annualized). So what kind of impact could expand that number to eight more… pic.twitter.com/GjEJbJ0S8b
– Entropy Advisors (@EntropyAdvisors) February 25, 2026
Some estimates suggest the change could add around $27 million in annualized revenue on top of the roughly $34 million already generated and used to burn UNI, marking one of the largest changes to Uniswap’s token economy since the reintroduction of fees late last year.
The governance proposal, split into two on-chain votes due to transaction limits, would include protocol fees across multiple blockchains. It also introduces a new v3OpenFeeAdapter that applies protocol fees evenly across liquidity pools based on their fee tier, rather than requiring governance to enable pools individually.
The change would make protocol fee capture automatic for all new v3 pools, reducing manual intervention and potentially expanding revenue collection on long-tail trading pairs.
Since the first phase of the fee change rollout late last year, Uniswap has already burned over $5.5 million worth of UNI, implying an annualized run rate of around $34 million at current levels.
This rally comes as crypto markets are broadly rebounding, with bitcoin up around 4-5% and ether around 8% over the same period.
Still, the long-term impact will depend on whether capturing higher protocol fees affects Uniswap’s liquidity competitiveness on Layer 2 networks, where fee-sensitive traders and market makers can migrate to alternative venues.
After years of trading volume without significant revenue for token holders, the latest quarters show that the protocol is starting to retain its revenue.
In the first quarter of 2026, Uniswap recorded gross profit of around $3.12 million, according to data from DeFi Llama, compared to effectively zero in previous periods.
This change follows the gradual activation of the fee change late last year, which redirected a portion of trading fees to UNI burns.
If passed, the vote would cement Uniswap’s transition to a revenue-generating cross-chain protocol, with UNI’s burns increasingly tied to overall commercial activity beyond Ethereum.
