Uniswap v4 has quietly been rolled-out on 12 chains in the last weekend. This is about 20 months since its first announcement.
Uniswap v4 is a big deal for the simple reason that it threatens to turn one of DeFi’s most essential primitives — DEXs — into a cheap commodity.
Uniswap’s competitors tried for a long time to attract users by offering incrementally new and piecemeal services like dynamic fees (Trader Joseph), out of range liquidity in money markets (Balancer), internalization of MEVs (Skip), among others.
Uniswap response: You can build any DEX on v4.
The primary innovation in version 4 makes this possible. “hooks.” Smart contracts and hooks are two separate things “attached” Uniswap liquid pools allows developers to create custom DEX logic based on specific behaviors.
The fee tiers for Uniswap v3 pools, for example, are predefined. Now that v4 pools are available, pool operators can customise their logic by adjusting dynamic fee curves based on factors like volatility. Even LPs can be punished with a charge when they withdraw liquid.
It is possible to design liquidity pools to use Aave as a way to collect unused cash and generate yields for the LPs. Or, implement KYC features such as NFT-gating.
Even Devs could introduce a “fee switch” It is possible to use Uniswap without the need to wait until Uniswap protocols. There are many possibilities.
The V4 hooks let the deployers of liquidity pools act like their own “DEX.”
For an example of hooks in action, look to Flaunch — a new memecoin launchpad on Base.
Tokens can be purchased at a set price on Flaunch for 30 minutes. All tokens remaining after 30 minutes are sold, and memecoin is released on the market.
In contrast to pump.fun however, all trading fees go directly to the creators, and 100% is paid back in buybacks. (The exact percentage depends on each creator.) When tokens earn 0.1 ETH of trading fees, they are eligible for buybacks.
Flaunch has been able to use hooks to incorporate this custom logic within every Uniswap v4 Liquidity Pool that a Memecoin was launched in (there have already been thousands).
Flaunch, which was launched last Friday, has released 2,135 tokens and generated $75.6 millions in v4 trade volumes. It also paid out 51 ETH.

HookRank.io shows that Flaunch has contracted 24 hooks worth TVL $2.3 million.
Bunni DEX is another option. It’s an a “rehypothecation hook” LPs should use v4 in conjunction with lending protocols that are more profitable for LP strategies. Whetstone’s Doppler protocol is a liquidty bootstrapping method that builds on top of the v4 contract.
Sorella Labs has also developed a new innovation for v4 hooks, the Angstrom DEX. Angstrom is implementing a v4 hook that seeks to mitigate MEV leakages to L2 sequencers by protecting LPs against CEX-DEX arbitrageurs (loss-vs.-rebalancing) and traders against MEV attacks.
According to this list, about 24 active projects are building on hooks v4.
With v4, Uniswap no longer serves as a launchpad for liquidity pools. Uniswap is now a launchpad for spot DEX.
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