What Does BlackRock Want by Buying UNI?

Original Author: Jae, PANews

On February 11th, global asset management giant BlackRock announced the deployment of its approximately $2.2 billion tokenized treasury fund, BUIDL, onto the UniswapX protocol for on-chain trading.

Simultaneously, BlackRock confirmed it has purchased Uniswap's native governance token, UNI. While the quantity was not disclosed, this marks the first time this financial empire, managing $14 trillion in assets, has directly exposed its balance sheet to a DeFi (decentralized finance) governance token.

Upon the news, the UNI token surged over 25%. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams stated: "A big day for DeFi. This collaboration will leverage Uniswap's market structure to provide on-chain trading for BUIDL investors, settling on Ethereum. This is a significant step towards 'almost all value being traded on-chain.'"

This event is not merely a simple asset listing; it is a new test of financial infrastructure. For the first time, Wall Street has actively walked into DeFi's living room, sat down, handed over a business card, and pulled out a checkbook. Tony Edward, founder of the Thinking Crypto Podcast, pointed out: "This is major crypto adoption. BlackRock is embracing DeFi."

For Uniswap, this signifies its transformation from a primarily retail-focused platform to the invisible backend for institutional-grade liquidity. For BlackRock, it signifies its belief that DEXs (decentralized exchanges) have matured enough to be entrusted as underlying financial infrastructure.

BUIDL's $2.2 Billion "Boards" Uniswap: Treasury Bonds Can Instantly Become Stablecoins

To understand the weight of this collaboration, a key fact must be clarified: BUIDL is not being thrown into a standard Uniswap V2 or V3 liquidity pool like a typical token; instead, it is being integrated into UniswapX.

Since its launch, BUIDL has grown into the largest institutional-grade tokenized fund on-chain, with its assets primarily backed by U.S. Treasuries, cash, and repurchase agreements.

However, the liquidity of such assets has long been constrained by traditional over-the-counter (OTC) trading or specific redemption cycles, limiting their utility in the digital asset market.

UniswapX is an "intents-based" trading aggregation protocol launched by Uniswap Labs. Its core mechanism is a Request for Quote (RFQ) framework, providing institutional investors with a gas-free, MEV (Miner Extractable Value)-resistant, and price-optimized trading environment.

In other words, users don't need to find trading routes, pay gas fees, or worry about MEV attacks themselves. They simply express the intent "I want to swap BUIDL for USDC," and professional market makers handle the rest.

The biggest difference between this architecture and traditional AMMs (Automated Market Makers) is that it is programmably compliant.

In BUIDL's trading flow, Securitize Markets will act as the "regulatory gatekeeper," responsible for pre-qualification and whitelist verification of all participating investors. Only accredited investors with assets exceeding $5 million can enter this trading ecosystem. Market makers like Wintermute and Flowdesk have also been pre-screened.

This means that although BUIDL trades on a decentralized protocol, its participants remain under strict KYC/AML regulation.

This concept of a "compliance layer" resolves the conflict between the anonymity of decentralized protocols and the compliance requirements of traditional finance. Simply put, the trade occurs on Uniswap's interface, settlement happens on Ethereum's ledger, but the compliance burden is front-loaded to Securitize.

This allows Uniswap to maintain the permissionless nature of its protocol's base layer while absorbing institutional capital. It's a full application of the "intents-based" trading model: users express intent, and professional fillers execute within a compliant framework.

Even more disruptive is the leap in settlement efficiency.

Traditional money market fund settlements typically take T+1 or longer. The integration of BUIDL on UniswapX will enable atomic, instant settlement.

This indicates that holders can, at any time (including weekends and holidays), instantly swap their Treasury share yielding a 4% annualized return for USDC, significantly enhancing capital efficiency.

For institutions, this level of liquidity will give tokenized assets unparalleled advantages over traditional assets in collateral management and risk hedging.

This essentially creates a highly liquid secondary market for a "yield-bearing stablecoin." And UniswapX provides a low-friction conversion channel between this yield-bearing right and immediate purchasing power.

UNI is No Longer a "Governance Token with No Value"; BlackRock is Investing Real Money

If BUIDL's listing is a business collaboration, then BlackRock's purchase of UNI tokens is a capital alliance.

For a long time, UNI was mockingly called a "governance token with no value." Holders, apart from participating in voting, could not directly receive any economic share from the protocol's annual trading volume of hundreds of billions of dollars. However, this state ended in late 2025.

The passage of the "UNIfication" proposal rewrote UNI's value narrative.

Under the "UNIfication" framework, Uniswap officially activated the protocol fee switch and introduced a smart contract system called "TokenJar + Firepit."

All protocol fees from Uniswap V2, V3, and the L2 Unichain flow into the TokenJar. The only way to extract this value is by burning an equivalent amount of UNI tokens through the Firepit.

This programmatic buyback-and-burn mechanism directly converts the protocol's trading volume into deflationary pressure for the UNI token for the first time.

As of February 12th, based on estimates from DeFiLlama data, the Uniswap protocol's annualized revenue is projected to exceed $26 million.

BlackRock's purchase of UNI tokens at this juncture demonstrates sharp capital acumen.

UNI is no longer just symbolic voting power; it is a blue-chip asset with "productive asset" attributes. As trading volume for RWA assets like BUIDL on Uniswap continues to grow, the fees captured by the protocol will rise, accelerating UNI burns and enhancing the token's intrinsic value.

However, the strategic intent of this transaction goes far beyond financial returns; it's about "influence" over the global decentralized liquidity infrastructure. As a capital behemoth managing over $14 trillion in assets, BlackRock needs to ensure the trading protocols underpinning its tokenized assets operate stably and are not subject to radical governance changes unfavorable to institutions.

Holding a sufficient proportion of UNI tokens means:

1. Preventing Discriminatory Fee Policies: Preventing the UniswapX pathway used by BUIDL from being subject to excessive fees.
2. Promoting Standardization of Compliant Hooks: Within Uniswap V4's Hooks architecture, BlackRock can use its voting power to support compliant settlement Hooks that meet regulatory requirements, creating a more institution-friendly trading environment.
3. Asset Value Endorsement: Through direct holdings, BlackRock also signals to other traditional financial institutions that certain DeFi tokens have matured enough to be part of diversified asset allocation.

The alliance between BlackRock and Uniswap is not a chance encounter of capital; it marks DeFi's official transition from "experimental finance" to "infrastructure finance."

By introducing a participant of BlackRock's caliber, Uniswap is carving out a new moat in the increasingly competitive DEX market.