Uniswap UNI

Trades are not matched against an order book but priced by a formula. Two assets are placed into a shared pool and the trade price follows from their ratio: buying one of them shifts the proportion and makes the next purchase dearer. No seller is required — the pool itself is the counterparty, and liquidity providers earn a share of the fee in proportion to what they put in.

Anyone can create a pool for any pair, with no permission and no listing, which is why the venue is where new assets first trade. A later version let providers concentrate funds into a narrow price band instead of the whole curve, sharply improving capital efficiency while requiring them to watch the edges of their position: a large move leaves them holding the asset that fell.

The UNI token carries governance rights: holders decide which versions to deploy, how the treasury is used, and whether a portion of trading fees should be diverted to the protocol.

A governance token and protocol revenue are separate things: whether a share of fees should flow to UNI holders has been debated in governance for years.