Uniswap Labs Debuts Unichain, a Layer 2 Blockchain Designed to Take Speed, Efficiency, and Cross-Chain Liquidity to the Next Level

Unichain is built on Ethereum's core principles—open, permissionless, and decentralized. As the first L2 to launch as a Stage 1 rollup, this means that Unichain is committed to decentralization on day one.

Uniswap Labs, the pioneer in decentralized finance (DeFi), today announced the public debut of Unichain, a blockchain designed to propel speed, efficiency, and cross-chain liquidity to unprecedented heights. In just a few months since launching Unichain’s testnet, users and developers have processed over 88 million test transactions and 12 million test smart contracts in anticipation of the launch. Over 80 applications and infrastructure providers will be supporting or building on Unichain.

“We’re here to make DeFi faster, cheaper, more decentralized, which is why we launched Unichain to be permissionless from day one.”

Layer 2 (L2) blockchains like Unichain are essential for driving broader blockchain adoption among crypto traders, digital asset creators, and institutions. They help alleviate congestion on Ethereum, enabling faster transactions, lower fees, and a seamless experience across blockchains. For everyday crypto users, this translates to cheaper and faster trading, access to integrated stablecoins like USDC, and improved cross-chain swapping.

“Unichain is built differently,” said Hayden Adams, Founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs. “We’re here to make DeFi faster, cheaper, more decentralized, which is why we launched Unichain to be permissionless from day one.”

Setting New Industry Benchmarks

With one-second block times—and plans to reach 250 milliseconds—on Unichain will pave the way for the next generation of markets for both users and builders, making Unichain the fastest chain in the industry. Today, user benefits include:

The Open, Faster, L2 Chain for Crypto Traders and Builders

Built on Ethereum’s core principles—open, permissionless, and decentralized—Unichain is the first L2 to launch as a Stage 1 rollup. This means that Unichain is committed to decentralization on day one. Anyone can participate in maintaining the integrity of the chain with permissionless fault proofs—a feature that allows anyone to challenge transactions. Later this year, the Unichain Validation Network will enable anyone to verify blocks, further decentralizing the chain.

For crypto traders, high gas fees and slow transactions have been a persistent pain point. With fast block times and low fees, Unichain is optimized for onchain markets, offering one-second blocks and 95% cheaper gas than Ethereum. In the coming months, Unichain will introduce advanced capabilities like Flashbot’s Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which leads to faster finality, a term used in DeFi to describe transaction settlements on Ethereum.

Finally, the experience for users moving crypto between different blockchains can be slow and clunky. Innovations like ERC-7683, a universal standard developed in partnership with Across, aim to reduce this friction when swapping or trading across chains.

Unichain is built on the Optimism Superchain, with a vision of creating a network of interoperable chains. The public can access Unichain via the Uniswap Interface and App. For more technical details, including the full list of applications deployed on Unichain, visit Unichain or read the blog.

About Uniswap Labs

Uniswap Labs builds some of the most widely adopted DeFi products, including a self-custody mobile wallet, a trading API and a web interface. Founded in 2018 by Hayden Adams, who invented the Uniswap Protocol, a peer-to-peer system for swapping digital assets that has processed more than $2.75T in volume since its founding, Uniswap Labs is a software company.