I noticed an interesting thing in the market. Do you remember how Uniswap used to be the locomotive of all DeFi? Every one and a half years, it released something revolutionary — V1 with AMM, V2 with ERC-20 pairs, V3 with concentrated liquidity. And then V4 with Hooks in 2023. It seemed like innovation was unstoppable.

But now, nearly three years have passed since V4, and there’s silence. No V5. No big announcements. Uniswap seems to be stuck in place.

Yes, V4 itself is cool — programmable plugins allow developers to add their own logic to liquidity pools. Dynamic fees, limit orders, MEV protection — all possible. But since launching in January 2025, TVL has not grown. The maximum was $1.2 billion, now it’s fallen to $650 million. That’s only 40% of V3, even V2 is ahead.

Meanwhile, Uniswap is actively expanding into other areas. Launched Unichain, tried CCA for token auctions, collaborates with Aztec and Rainbow. Sounds ambitious, but in reality — it’s copying what hundreds of projects are already doing. Launching your own chain, creating a launchpad — that’s not innovation in 2026, it’s just following the trend.

At the same time, growth leaders, the COO, and the chief legal officer have left Uniswap. The company is cutting costs, but it doesn’t help. The UNI token has fallen 44% over the year and trades around $3.25. Analysts call it a token with no real value.

In November, the Uniswap fund proposed to include protocol fees and burn 100 million UNI. That helped — the token jumped nearly 38%, but it’s a temporary effect. Uniswap’s actual revenue from fees is only $46 million a year. That’s less than PancakeSwap, Jupiter, Lido, and Aave.

What’s happening? Uniswap remains the largest DEX by TVL, but the DeFi industry as a whole has stalled. No fundamental innovations, narratives exhausted, liquidity dispersed among hundreds of competitors. Uniswap is a reflection of this crisis.

The question remains: will there be a V5? And most importantly — can Uniswap become the locomotive of the next DeFi Summer? For now, it seems not.