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2025 was a historic year for blockchain security, with Uniswap Labs providing one of the clearest examples of how security should be approached end to end.
On the protocol and product side, Uniswap Labs helped advance the development of v4 Hooks, Continuous Clearing Auctions, new execution environments such as Monad and Unichain, smart wallet workflows, and institutional Trading API integrations.
On the security side, Uniswap Labs hosts the largest bug bounty in DeFi on Cantina, recently expanded its scope to cover Protocol Fees, ran targeted smart contract audits, and acted as a core Web3SOC collaborator.
Together, these moves position the Uniswap ecosystem as programmable liquidity infrastructure with a security program that sets a benchmark for the rest of the industry.
Uniswap in 2025 as Programmable Liquidity Infrastructure
The Uniswap Protocol remains the reference AMM environment for ERC20 assets across EVM networks. In 2025 it moved further into the role of an execution and liquidity layer that other applications, chains, and institutional platforms can build on, supported by the following protocol development efforts advanced by Uniswap Labs:
Uniswap’s v4 Hooks are contracts attached to individual pools that execute at specific lifecycle points such as before or after swaps or liquidity changes. They allow pool creators to implement dynamic fee schedules, encode custom AMM curves, express time based execution flows, reuse liquidity through external strategies while maintaining Uniswap as settlement, and more. This makes Uniswap programmable at the execution layer with shared settlement beneath it.
Continuous Clearing Auctions extend that programmability to distribution mechanics. CCA provides a permissionless, onchain mechanism for token distribution and liquidity bootstrapping that automatically seeds v4 pools. This gives projects a predictable path to launch assets on Uniswap and gives market participants transparent price discovery for new or thinly traded tokens.
Deployment into Monad and Unichain broadens the execution surface. Monad provides high throughput performance in an EVM compatible environment. Unichain introduces a Uniswap aligned L2 designed for DeFi execution. It runs sub-200 millisecond confirmation cycles through trusted execution environments, supports fair ordering, mitigates extractive MEV, and offers revert protection at the protocol layer. The result is an execution environment where performance, fairness, and verification are built directly into the chain.
Smart wallet adds account abstraction capabilities that open the opportunity for features such as gas abstraction, sponsored transactions, and controlled approvals. This ties execution to real operational needs for both new and advanced users.
Uniswap Through an Institutional Lens
From an institutional standpoint, Uniswap in 2025 resembles market infrastructure that can sit alongside centralized venues and OTC desks.
Liquidity Access Through Regulated Channels
Anchorage Digital, Fireblocks, and Talos integrated the Uniswap Labs’ Trading API into their platforms. Institutions can access Uniswap v2, v3, v4, and UniswapX liquidity within custody environments that already enforce policies, approvals, and reporting. They can route orders and algorithms without moving assets into unmanaged wallets. Uniswap becomes a liquidity backend that fits into established operational frameworks.
API First Integration
The Uniswap Trading API has become the primary surface for professional users. It provides standardized quoting, routing options and transaction templates that connect to risk engines and audit systems. It helps users and integrators evaluate swap paths that match expectations familiar to institutional desks.
Programmable Liquidity for Strategies
v4 Hooks allow institutions to encode execution logic directly into the AMM layer. Time based execution, dynamic fees, and curated liquidity models can be expressed in contracts onchain. This creates measurable execution paths that risk and operations groups can evaluate and monitor.
Multi Chain and Infrastructure Control
Monad and Unichain expand execution environments in ways that align with institutional requirements. Unichain in particular provides fast confirmations, TEE based block production, fair ordering, MEV mitigation, and revert protection.
For many institutional desks this combination of programmable liquidity and professional-grade APIs turns Uniswap from a DeFi venue into core infrastructure.
The largest bug bounty in DeFi
Uniswap Labs’ security efforts in 2025 match the scale of its protocol ambitions.
The Uniswap bug bounty on Cantina is the largest in DeFi:
- Maximum reward of 15,500,000 USDC for critical issues
- Up to 1,000,000 USDC for high severity issues
- Up to 100,000 USDC for medium severity issues
The program focuses on the Uniswap Protocol as a set of persistent, non upgradable smart contracts that implement ERC20 swaps on EVM based networks. It requires testing on local forks, restricts public disclosure without written consent from Uniswap Labs, and excludes individuals who worked directly on the affected code from claiming rewards.
In November 2025, Uniswap Labs expanded this bounty to include the Protocol Fees repository. That repository defines how protocol level fees are calculated, tracked, and routed. Bringing this code into the bounty scope means that execution paths, consensus relevant behavior, and fee infrastructure now sit under one continuous, incentivized security program.
This builds on the earlier Uniswap v4 competition on Cantina, which ran from 6 September to 1 October 2024 with a total prize pool of $2,350,000. That competition targeted:
- v4 core, including PoolManager.sol and all of its dependencies such as ProtocolFees.sol, Hooks.sol, Pool.sol, TickMath.sol, and the associated math and state libraries
- v4 periphery, including PositionManager.sol, V4Router.sol, and their supporting router and calldata handling contracts
- The Universal Router, with focus on new or changed code paths like V4SwapRouter and the v3 to v4 migrator across mainnet and major L2s
Researchers worked against the same non upgradable, censorship resistant design that defines Uniswap v4, using Foundry and local environments to exercise swap paths, pool accounting, hook behavior, and routing under realistic conditions.
Together, the v4 competition and the current bug bounty form a continuous security track. The core v4 contracts, router logic, and fee modules were first examined under a concentrated competition and are now kept under permanent public scrutiny.
The systems that handle trillions in volume are deliberately exposed to ongoing external testing, with rewards calibrated to their importance.
Collaborative audits on protocol economics and governance
Alongside the bounty, Uniswap Labs and Cantina ran focused smart contract audits on surfaces that matter for protocol economics and governance.
This audit covered the contracts that configure protocol fees on Uniswap V3 pools and route those fees into Uniswap’s fee jars, releasers, and vesting contracts, checking that fee settings, collection, and release behave as designed.
The Compact representation audit
This audit reviewed The Compact, an ERC‑6909 ‘resource lock’ system used for escrow‑like agreements and multichain workflows. Because the implementation is heavily optimized with custom storage layouts, calldata encodings, and transient storage, the review focused on whether that low‑level encoding logic is both safe and compatible with standards like EIP‑712.
This audit evaluated the MinimalDelegation smart wallet used for delegated execution via signatures and EIP‑4337 user operations, focusing on signature verification, nonces and expiry, hooks, and EntryPoint compatibility.
Together, these engagements show Uniswap applying security discipline to the full protocol surface, not only to swap execution. Fees, state handling, and governance all receive structured attention.
Uniswap Labs as a core Web3SOC collaborator
Uniswap Labs is a core collaborator on Web3SOC, the institutional readiness framework Cantina is building with leading organizations.
Web3SOC offers a structured way to evaluate DeFi organizations across operational, financial, security, and regulatory dimensions.
By contributing to Web3SOC, Uniswap Labs helps define the criteria that institutions will use to measure protocol readiness. For many organizations, Uniswap is the reference case when they think about what institutional grade should mean for liquidity protocols.
2026: How Uniswap changes the questions, not just the answers
Rather than asking what Uniswap will ship next, 2026 is likely to be about how the rest of the ecosystem responds to what is already in motion.
Several shifts follow naturally from Uniswap’s 2025 trajectory.
First, risk and strategy conversations will start from Uniswap by default. For many institutions and advanced DeFi organizations, Uniswap’s pools, order flow, and execution data will become the baseline they use to test new venues, new chains, and new products.
Second, more products will treat Uniswap as their underlying market. Structured yield, passive liquidity products, execution vaults, and credit systems can use Hooks, auctions, and routing as primitives. In practice, this means end users may never think about the AMM explicitly while their portfolios or strategies rely on it under the surface.
Third, institutional desks will expect DeFi integrations to look like the Uniswap integrations they already know. API based access through regulated custodians, deterministic behavior, and clear operational responsibilities will feel normal. New protocols that require bespoke operational paths will have a higher bar to clear.
Fourth, security programs will be judged in relative terms. A protocol that wants to support similar volumes and counterparties will be asked, in simple language, how its bounties, audits, and readiness work compare to Uniswap’s.
Closing
Uniswap entered 2025 as the leading AMM and closed the year as both programmable liquidity infrastructure and a clear example of security excellence in DeFi.
As more organizations adopt this level of structure around architecture, institutional access, and security, the standard for the entire ecosystem will rise with them. Cantina’s role is to help design and run these programs so they hold when it matters.
If you are planning a large scale bug bounty, preparing for a smart contract audit focused on protocol economics or governance, or aligning your organization with Web3SOC grade readiness, contact us and we will help you scope, test, and strengthen your model.