uniswap exchange

 Uniswap is a completely different type of exchange that‘s fully decentralized – meaning it isn’t owned and operated by a single entity – and uses a relatively new type of trading model called an automated liquidity protocol (see below).

The Uniswap platform was built in 2018 on top of the Ethereum blockchain, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency project by market capitalization, which makes it compatible with all ERC-20 tokens and infrastructure such as wallet services like MetaMask and MyEtherWallet.

Uniswap is also completely open source, which means anyone can copy the code to create their own decentralized exchanges. It even allows users to list tokens on the exchange for free. Normal centralized exchanges are profit-driven and charge very high fees to list new coins, so this alone is a notable difference. Because Uniswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX), it also means users maintain control of their funds at all times as opposed to a centralized exchange that requires traders to give up control of their private keys so that orders can be logged on an internal database rather than be executed on a blockchain, which is more time consuming and expensive. By retaining control of private keys, it eliminates the risk of losing assets if the exchange is ever hacked. According to the latest figures, Uniswap is currently the fourth-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) platform and has over $3 billion worth of crypto assets locked away on its protocol.

The way Uniswap solves the liquidity problem (described in the introduction) of centralized exchanges is through an automated liquidity protocol. This works by incentivizing people trading on the exchange to become liquidity providers (LPs): Uniswap users pool their money together to create a fund that’s used to execute all trades that take place on the platform. Each token listed has its own pool that users can contribute to, and the prices for each token are worked out using a math algorithm run by a computer (explained in “How token price is determined,” below).

With this system, a buyer or seller does not have to wait for an opposite party to appear to complete a trade. Instead, they can execute any trade instantly at a known price provided there’s enough liquidity in the particular pool to facilitate it.

In exchange for putting up their funds, each LP receives a token that represents the staked contribution to the pool. For example, if you contributed $10,000 to a liquidity pool that held $100,000 in total, you would receive a token for 10% of that pool. This token can be redeemed for a share of the trading fees. Uniswap charges users a flat 0.30% fee for every trade that takes place on the platform and automatically sends it to a liquidity reserve.

Whenever a liquidity provider decides they want to exit, they receive a portion of the total fees from the reserve relative to their staked amount in that pool. The token they received which keeps a record of what stake they’re owed is then destroyed.It’s important to note that whenever someone adds a new ERC-20 token to Uniswap, that person has to add a certain amount of the chosen ERC-20 token and an equal amount of another ERC-20 token to start the liquidity pool.

The equation for working out the price of each token is x*y=k, where the amount of token A is x and the amount of token B is y. K is a constant value, aka a number that doesn’t change.

For example, Bob wants to trade chainlink (LINK) for ether using the Uniswap LINK/ETH pool. Bob adds a large number of LINK to the pool which increases the ratio of LINK in the pool to ether. Since the value K must remain the same, it means the cost of ether increases while the cost of link in the pool decreases. So the more LINK Bob puts in, the less ether he gets in return because the price of it increases.

The size of the liquidity pool also determines how much the price of tokens will change during a trade. The more money, aka liquidity, there is in a pool, the easier it is to make larger trades without causing the price to slide as much.