Uniswap v3 Became a ‘Uniflop’ on Opening Day

The highly-anticipated version 3 Uniswap upgrade may have fallen flat on its first day. Traders have been reporting high fees and technical difficulties using the platform.

The launch of Uniswap v3 has been one of the most eagerly awaited events in the crypto calendar this year. The upgrade was finally rolled out on May 5, but many of the much-needed speed and cost improvements were missing.

Users have been flocking to crypto social media to air their experiences with the revamped decentralized exchange, and not all of them have been positive.

Uniswap v3 teething pains

Yearn Finance developer ‘banteg’ queried the token swap quoting system which also offers quotes from the previous version with a button that says “get a better price on v2;”

“If frontend gets a better quote from v2, why not just route it and show a notice? There is no reason in the world why a user would prefer getting a worse execution. v2 rollout had the same problem.”

On its Telegram feed, DeFi Prime commented on the complexities of using the new interface:

“Add liquidity UI now requires a master’s degree to figure out how to price your liquidity position.  It’s a huge step backward from the simplicity we had in v2.”

The majority of the negative comments were about the cost of using the platform as Ethereum network fees remain high and there were no gas-saving solutions shipped with v3.

Managing Partner at Dragonfly Capital, Haseeb Qureshi, commented on the fees using an example transaction from three wrapped ETH (wETH) to DAI costing around $24 in network fees.

“Looks like Uniswap v3 is more gas expensive than v2, roughly as expected. Specifically, it’s about 28% more expensive for single-hop transactions it looks like. For larger transactions that cross multiple ticks/buckets, the gas costs should be slightly larger.”

Another complaint was the astronomical cost of creating a pool and adding liquidity, which one developer found to be 0.2 ETH or around $750.

This all goes against Uniswap’s original claims that gas prices would be lower on version 3.

UNI price outlook

At the time of press, UNI prices had declined marginally on the day with a 1.6% dip to $41.90 according to CoinGecko. The token was still cooling off from its May 3 all-time high of just below $45.

According to DappRadar, there is still $9.5 billion in collateral on the platform, so the high costs of using it have not resulted in any noticeable liquidity losses.