Uniswap’s UNI token is up approximately 19% in the past 24 hours as on-chain voting began on a major governance proposal that would enable protocol fees and introduce a long-discussed UNI burn mechanism.
UNI began to climb shortly after the voting period opened at 03:50 UTC on December 20, according to Uniswap governance data. A UNI-USD one-day chart from TradingView shows the strongest phase of the rally taking place during the early hours of the voting window, with the price surging above the $5.40 to $5.50 range and continuing to rise throughout the day, alongside the increase in trading volume.
Around 7:30 p.m. UTC, UNI was trading near $6.27, up about 19% on the day. The move stood out against a relatively quiet broader market, with bitcoin consolidating near $88,300 and ether trading slightly lower around $2,976. The overall crypto market cap increased by around 1% during the same period, highlighting UNI’s relative outperformance.
The vote focuses on a sweeping governance proposal known as “Unification,” a name that reflects its goal of aligning Uniswap’s economic incentives, governance structure, and development efforts under a single framework. If approved, the proposal would implement protocol fees in Uniswap v2 and some v3 pools, routing those fees to a programmatic mechanism that burns UNI tokens.
The proposal also includes a retroactive burn of 100 million UNI from the Treasury, intended to approximate the amount that could have been burned if protocol fees had been active since the early years of Uniswap. Additional components would direct Unichain sequencer fees to the same burn mechanism and introduce new auction-based systems designed to internalize MEV while improving liquidity provider returns.
Beyond enabling fees, the proposal formalizes closer operational alignment between Uniswap Labs, the Uniswap Foundation, and on-chain governance. Under the plan, Labs would focus on developing and growing the protocol, while removing fees from its interface, wallet, and API. Development and ecosystem initiatives would be funded through a governance-approved growth budget.
Although Uniswap governance has debated enabling protocol fees for years, previous efforts to do so have failed due to regulatory uncertainty and disagreements over incentive design. The opening of formal on-chain voting appears to have catalyzed a surge in market interest, with traders positioning themselves around the possibility of direct value accumulation tied to Uniswap’s dominant trading volumes.
Early voting data showed overwhelming support for the proposal, although voting remains open until 18:14 UTC on December 25. Although the outcome is not yet final, the timing of UNI’s rally suggests that the market is reacting to the start of the governance process itself and the prospect of a structural change in how value accrues to UNI holders.
