Uniswap moves to switch on fees for its newest pools, and burn more UNI

V4 fee vote sails through with near-unanimous support

@Uniswap Labs opened a governance vote on July 7 to extend its UNIfication fee-and-burn program to v4 pools. The proposal asks $UNI holders to approve protocol fees on a portion of Uniswap v4 pools, with a five-day Snapshot vote running through July 12 and a binding on-chain vote to follow the week of July 13. The temperature check is tracking at roughly 93% support.

Protocol fees are already live across all v2 and v3 pools on 11 chains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Celo, OP Mainnet, Soneium, X Layer, Worldchain, Zora, BNB Chain, and Polygon. The current proposal would bring v4 pools into that same framework, marking the broadest expansion of the burn mechanism to date.

Because of GovernorBravo's limit of 10 actions per proposal, two separate on-chain votes will be posted in parallel to accommodate all chains.

How the burn engine works, and why v4 is different

Protocol fees on each chain flow into contracts called TokenJar, and anyone who wants to claim those fees must first burn an equal value of $UNI. The burned tokens are bridged back to Ethereum and sent to the 0xdead address, removing them from circulation permanently.

V2 and v3 pools have simple fixed fees, but v4 has a "hook" system that lets developers add extra features to pools, including the ability to change fees dynamically. To handle this complexity, the proposal activates fees on three families of v4 pools, routing them into the UNIfication burn mechanism through a new V4FeePolicy and V4FeeAdapter contract system.

The program's momentum is already clear. Uniswap burned a record 186,000 $UNI in a single day last month, surpassing the previous daily high of 134,000 recorded in early June. Adding v4 pools would widen the burn engine to its largest scope yet.

The proposal is not without debate. At least one prominent liquidity provider has warned that the v4 fee switch could drive providers away. The UNIfication fee switch has faced criticism from liquidity providers because of lower returns, which could lead to capital moving to competing DEXs, particularly as v4 adoption is still in its early stages.

The UNIfication program itself was passed in December 2025. The original proposal received more than 125 million votes in support over five days of voting, with just 742 dissenting, transforming $UNI from a purely governance mechanism into a value-accruing asset.

Sources
Uniswap Governance Forum: Temp Check – Activate v4 Protocol Fees
Cryptopolitan: Uniswap considers vote to expand UNIfication to v4 protocol fees
CoinDesk: Uniswap's UNIfication proposal backed overwhelmingly by voters