Yesterday, Uniswap launched the option to trade NFTs on its platform. Uniswap will be an aggregator: it lists NFTs from all major marketplaces, including OpenSea and LooksRare. Uniswap claims its NFT marketplace is up to 15% cheaper in gas fees compared to other NFT aggregators. 

With the launch, the decentralized exchange makes good on its promise of last summer, when it acquired NFT marketplace aggregator Genie. Aggregators combine multiple marketplace listings into one interface, which is obviously user friendly. As part of the launch, Uniswap will airdrop 5 million USDC to past users of Genie. 

Integration across platforms and marketplaces

Until now, it was only possible on Uniswap to trade ERC-20 tokens, the "normal" fungible tokens on Ethereum. The move into NFT land shows that Uniswap believes in the NFT market and wants to claim a stake in this competitive domain. 

From the other end of the spectrum, the original NFT marketplaces are performing comparable acts of integration: they support more and more blockchains. For example, yesterday came the news that OpenSea supports Binance Chain. This means that from a user perspective, the walled gardens between fungible and non-fungible tokens will increasingly vanish. And why not, indeed? As users and buyers, we don't want to be bothered by the software specific technicalities of these tokens.  

Another related development in NFT land is that big brands have started launching NFT marketplaces of their own, building mostly on Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. That's why one can claim that, even though prices are depressed, we are in a bullish NFT winter.

What is Uniswap?

Uniswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX), which means it allows users to trade directly, wallet to wallet, with other crypto owners. There is no middleman. It is the biggest dex, which even in the current bearmarket has a daily transaction volume of around one billion dollars. That is comparable to a centralized exchange like Coinbase.