Token Files · Uniswap UNI
A governance delegate can hold fewer tokens than the votes it represents. Trace the difference from the launch allocation to a proposal snapshot.
FILE 002 · ETHEREUM MAINNET · REVIEWED 1 NOVEMBER 2026
Which UNI are we examining?
Uniswap Labs identified the Ethereum token contract in its September 2020 launch announcement. Its address is 0x1f9840a85d5aF5bf1D1762F925BDADdC4201F984. This file examines the voting rights recorded by that contract. A liquidity position in a Uniswap pool is a separate asset.
What the launch figures tell us
One billion UNI were minted at launch. The announced allocation was 60% to the community, 21.266% to team members and future employees, 18.044% to investors and 0.69% to advisers. The last three groups had four-year vesting schedules. These are historical allocations. A claim about an upcoming unlock needs a separately dated contract or release schedule.
Who controls the votes?
A holder can delegate voting weight to another address while keeping the tokens. The token contract records changes to the delegate’s voting power in checkpoints. A ranking of the largest UNI wallets therefore answers a different question from a ranking of delegates. Neither ranking alone shows who actually voted on a particular proposal.
Build a reproducible governance check
Start with a proposal and record its governance system, proposal ID and voting snapshot. For a proposal that uses UNI’s on-chain checkpoints, look up the delegate’s voting weight at that past block using getPriorVotes. To establish participation, find the vote recorded for that proposal. Keep the snapshot block and vote transaction in separate fields so another reader can reproduce both findings. This file does not estimate present-day concentration.
Launch announcement and original allocation · UNI contract implementation