As announced in a post by Uniswap creator, Hayden Adams, the leading DEX in the industry has begun to impose a 0.15% fee. For now, only transactions made through Uniswap’s official frontend, and that involve certain digital assets such as USDC and ETH, will have the fee imposed upon them. 

Whilst the decision to tax only Uniswap frontend users is ostensibly made to ensure Uniswap’s volume does not decrease across other DeFi aggregator services, the result could be that only Uniswap’s most loyal traders are hit with the additional cost.

The major difference between this new 0.15% and others is that this fee is enforced by the centralized entity behind Uniswap - Uniswap Labs - in order to “continue to research, develop, build, ship, improve, and expand crypto and DeFi”.

Criticism From the Crypto Community

Despite Adams pointing out that the fee is “one of the lowest in the industry”, criticisms have emerged around its impact and the potential neglect of holders of the UNI token.

Blockworks have pointed out that, had the fee been active throughout 2023, Uniswap Labs would have pocketed some $33.1 million from traders, and some commenters’ responses proved been harsh.

Concerns are, for the most part, geared around the diverting of value away from the UNI token, whilst shareholders and individuals involved with Uniswap Labs become the ultimate beneficiaries of the new fee.

For context, the UNI token has shed more than $20 billion in market capitalization since it reached all-time highs in May 2021.

However, some critics’ comments are even harsher...