According to a new report, one of the major decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap is in the initial stages of raising substantial funds to increase its decentralized finance (DeFi) offerings.
Uniswap has been previously in talks with NFT lending protocols, planning to tackle liquidity issues and the “information asymmetry” around NFTs.
Uniswap Labs, a DeFi startup contributing to the Uniswap Protocol, is meeting with several investors to raise an equity round of $100 million to $200 million, TechCrunch reported on Sept. 30.
The startup is working with investors like Polychain and one of Singapore’s sovereign funds as part of the upcoming funding round, the report records, mentioning two anonymous people familiar with the matter. According to the report, Uniswap would be valued at $1 billion, but the terms of the deal are subject to changes as the discussions around the round have not been decided.
The new funding reportedly purposes to bring more DeFi tools and nonfungible token (NFT) offerings to Uniswap. Presently, Uniswap’s daily trading volumes amounted to $1.1 billion, or about 57% of all trading across global DEXes, according to data from DeFi Llama. By comparison, Curve, the second-largest DEX after Uniswap by volumes, has about $205 million in daily volumes.
“Our mission is to unlock universal ownership and exchange,” Uniswap Labs COO Mary-Catherine Lader reportedly said. “If you can embed the ability to swap value and have people join the community and exchange value with your project, or your company or organization — that’s a powerful way to allow more people to engage in this ownership,” she added.
Uniswap Labs did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.
As formerly reported by Cointelegraph, Uniswap has been in talks with multiple NFT lending protocols, aiming with ambitious plans to tackle liquidity issues and the “information asymmetry” around NFTs. The Ethereum-based DEX has experienced a rising trend despite the bear market this year, but grieved a major hack in July, with attackers making off at least $4.7 million worth of Ether (ETH).
Launched in 2018, Uniswap completed its first-ever funding round from the American crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm in 2019. The company also locked a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2020, with additional investments from firms like Paradigm, USV, Version One, Variant, Parafi Capital and others.
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