Uniswap Labs Blog

Safety and Simplicity with Uniswap
April 26, 2023

The Uniswap Labs iconic swap page is the first time DeFi "clicks" for many users. Hundreds of thousands of users swap using the Uniswap marketplace weekly, knowing they'll get the assets they're looking for at the right price with swaps that just work.

Recently, we brought our simple and safe swap experience to the Uniswap mobile app. Try it out yourself on iOS and Android.

Turning the complexities of the Uniswap Protocol into a one-click marketplace for swapping and LPing is no small task. Behind the scenes, Uniswap Labs has built Web3's most popular application to create a simpler and safer experience. Let's see how.

Swapping with the Uniswap marketplace

The best swap experience

A well-designed product communicates its purpose at a glance. When it comes to swapping, Uniswap is the gold standard. Our design philosophy is to take the complexities of DeFi and distill them into a simplified user experience.

Our swap experience became so distinctive that we turned it into a widget so anyone could embed the Uniswap UI into their app. Since we released it in 2022, the Uniswap Widget has been integrated into major applications like OpenSea, FWB, and others.

Widget

Our swap page includes additional features like the multi-chain network switcher so users can quickly navigate Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and other popular chains. Our recently launched mini portfolio lets users see their tokens, NFTs, onchain activity, manage LP positions, and even purchase crypto. Users can now see their portfolio and swap side-by-side, giving them an information-rich experience when they swap!

MiniPortfolio

Competitive prices with auto router

Beyond just a sleek design, users get great prices on the Uniswap marketplace. Liquidity in the Uniswap Protocol is split into different pools across v2 and v3. The best price for a swap may not come from one individual pool but from taking bits and pieces from multiple pools.

The Uniswap Labs auto router finds the best prices by comparing trade routes across v2 and v3 and even accounts for gas to get you the most efficient trade possible.

Router

Safe slippage

Most users never encounter price slippage, but we still have a few safety rails to protect users from lopsided trades, or whether the swap executes at all.

Price slippage is the difference between the price users expect to receive after swapping and what they actually receive based on the total movement of the market after a trade. We automatically calculate the slippage percentage depending on the trade size and gas cost.

If your trade goes through, we can guarantee a minimum number of tokens. If your trade exceeds the slippage percentage, your transaction will automatically fail as a failsafe. For smaller trades, we'll adjust slippage tolerance to improve the chances of the transaction succeeding.

Slippage

Token info

The Uniswap Protocol is a permissionless set of smart contracts. Anyone can create a pool with any token. This supports the "long tail" of tokens and explains why the Uniswap Protocol has thousands of tokens to trade.

To contextualize these tokens, each one has its own token details page. Each page gives a high-level snapshot with price charts, trading stats, project details, and the ability to swap right there.

As an added layer of security, we've included safety labels for each token to help users understand the risk profile of each token. While these warnings do not endorse or criticize any particular token, they help users make sense of them. You can find the criteria for token warnings in our Help Center.

Secure approvals with Permit2

Every smart contract interaction, like swapping, requires users to approve tokens from their wallets. Uniswap Labs developed Permit2 to share these approvals across applications, so you only need to approve once.

Unifying permissions for any token across multiple applications is a major safety improvement for our users. Permit2 has many other safety and UX features like expiring approvals instead of hanging approvals on a wallet's entire token balance, and batch approvals, transfers, and revokes to reduce the number of clicks each user has to perform.

Proving liquidity with the Uniswap marketplace

Swapping on Uniswap is powered by permissionless liquidity -- anyone can become a market maker. In contrast to traditional finance, only centralized players and market makers with large amounts of capital can participate. With thousands of LPs, the Uniswap Protocol has the deepest liquidity in Web3 on major token pairs.

Just as we've simplified swapping, we've also made it simple and safe to LP. Providing liquidity can confuse new users, but we work to make it possible for anyone. Our liquidity pool interface lets users select fee tiers, price ranges, and deposit amounts.

LP

Uniswap Labs automatically configures LP slippage tolerances to protect LPs, who can adjust them as needed. This guarantees a minimum amount of liquidity the LP provides to the pool.


We aim make it easy for anyone to interact with the Uniswap Protocol by focusing on simplicity and safety. We're constantly experimenting with new ways to provide the best UX while maintaining the high standard of security we're known for. If you have any feedback, we'd love to hear from you! Hop in our Discord and let us know how to improve our swap and LP experience.

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