Read from CryptoGrade's research record on October 13, 2026, our grade on Uniswap is B / Sound, with a score of 70.4, at position 8 in our ranking. On our October 12, 2026 record the score read the same 70.4 and the position read 9.

Hold those two sentences together, because they contain the whole argument of this piece. Uniswap is one of the most measurable things in crypto. Our own notes put real numbers on it: $3.81B of value locked in the protocol and $129.6M of protocol fees over 30 days, recorded when we scored the asset on October 13, 2026. And our own notes also say, in their own words, that those fees are "protocol-level gross activity and not token-holder revenue."

That gap is why UNI is a B and not an A.

From our own published description, without editorializing:

UNI is the governance token for Uniswap, a decentralized exchange on Ethereum that uses an automated market maker design. Uniswap lets people trade tokens through liquidity pools rather than through a traditional centralized order matching intermediary, and liquidity providers support that activity by depositing assets into the pools. UNI holders can vote on governance matters, including treasury use and future protocol changes.

Then the sentence most write ups leave out, which is in our description too: the supplied profile identifies governance as UNI's primary documented role, and it does not establish a clear fee, burn or cash flow entitlement for holders.

What makes Uniswap stand out, in our description: a long operating history in decentralized trading, the automated market maker model itself, and a broad presence across several blockchain networks.

That is the asset. Now the assessment.

Quoted word for word from our record, as read on October 13, 2026:

Three clauses. Two of them are compliments. The third is the one that costs the asset its letter.

Our published bands are set out on our framework page: A / Prime is a score of 80 and above, B / Sound is 60 to just under 80, C / Speculative is 40 to just under 60, F / Failed is below 40.

So 70.4 sits in the middle of the B band, roughly ten points clear of the floor and roughly ten points short of the A line. That is a more useful fact than the letter on its own. A letter tells you which band a reading landed in. It does not tell you where in the band, and those are two different pieces of information.

One thing the bands do not do is produce the letter by themselves. Our framework also runs pass or fail screens on top of the weighted score, and a tripped screen places an asset in F at any score, including a score in the A band. That is why we publish the grade from our record rather than working it out from a number. Uniswap's record grades it B.

For the curious: our dated history for UNI runs from June 23, 2026 to October 13, 2026, and across that whole range it carries exactly two different scores. One dated reading, September 23, 2026, reads 72.0. Every other dated reading in that range reads 70.4, including the first one and the one we read on October 13, 2026. Our published score change for UNI is -1.6, dated September 24, 2026. We attach no cause to it, and we are not going to invent one.

Our six research dimensions are tokenomics and value accrual, on chain usage and economics, security and decentralization and durability, ecosystem and moat, relative valuation, and market structure. Two of them are where Uniswap's grade comes from, and both are summarized here from our own rationales as read on October 13, 2026.

On chain usage and economics. This is the dimension with hard numbers. Quoted from our own usage rationale: Uniswap shows "substantial protocol activity: $3.81B TVL and $129.6M in 30-day fees." Our note calls those "strong usage and economic signals." Then it qualifies them in the same breath: the fees are "protocol-level gross activity and not token-holder revenue," and the developer proxy we could see is limited, though recent release activity is present.

Ecosystem and moat. Our note reads Uniswap as a category leader with clear network effects in decentralized exchange liquidity and broad ecosystem mindshare, and says the scale of that locked value and those fees supports a wide moat against credible rivals. It also says direct comparative metrics were not included in what it had.

If you want one sentence for why a widely held governance token still grades in our second band rather than our third: that is it. The protocol is real, it is busy, and it is hard to displace.

Tokenomics and value accrual. A large share of the maximum supply is already circulating, which our note reads as dilution that exists without being extreme. The problem is what is absent. In our own words, no unlock schedule, no fee switch and no token holder cash flow evidence is provided in what we hold, "so value accrual remains only moderate from available facts."

Read that against the usage dimension and the shape of the asset becomes clear. Our record says the protocol earns. It does not say the token does.

Relative valuation. Our note sets Uniswap's market capitalization against $129.6M of 30 day protocol fees and a $6.62B fully diluted value, and concludes that on simple peer sanity checks the valuation "is not cheap enough to score highly," while recording that no full peer set and no token holder cash flow multiple were provided. For the market figure itself, rather than the figure written into that note: our marketCap field read 4,567,826,272 for UNI on October 13, 2026.

The other two dimensions sit in between. On security, decentralization and durability, our note credits a long operating history and a record indicating finalized, immutable contracts, which supports durability and lowers execution risk, while saying no audit set, validator data or full cycle security evidence was in front of it. On market structure, it reads deep capitalization and likely tradable liquidity, with the token far below its all time high, as supporting a neutral to moderate score rather than a high conviction one.

Our standing thesis on Uniswap, summarized from our record on October 13, 2026: the evidence supports a high quality protocol franchise, with large value locked, meaningful fee generation and a durable market position. Tokenomics stay only mid tier because no fee entitlement, burn or unlock detail is provided. Valuation looks demanding relative to current gross economics. The setup is strongest on ecosystem and usage, and weaker on token specific accrual and valuation.

That is a real view and it is not a flattering one. A great protocol and a great token are two different claims, and our record only makes the first one.

One more thing worth seeing, because it is the kind of thing a ranking does and a price chart cannot.

Between our October 12 and October 13, 2026 records, Uniswap's score did not change. It read 70.4 on both dates and the letter stayed B / Sound. Its position still moved, from 9 to 8.

A position is relative. Uniswap went up a place because the asset that held position 8 fell below it, not because anything in Uniswap's own reading changed. Our record attaches no cause to that other asset's move, so we are not going to offer one. The point for a reader is narrower and more useful: in a ranking, your asset can move without moving, and the number that actually describes the asset is the score, not the place.

Our grade is a view on the asset. It is a summary of our research across those six dimensions, applied through a framework whose weights and screens are published in full at cryptograde.ai/framework, with a plain language walkthrough of how a grade is produced.

It is not a view on you, on your timing, or on how much of anything anyone should hold. Our record carries no risk list for UNI, and an empty risk list is not a claim that an asset is risk free. No grade of ours, at any letter, says an asset cannot lose value. Nothing we publish is individualized advice, and no one at CryptoGrade is a registered investment adviser or broker dealer.

It is also not a view we are paid to hold. We do not work commercially with the assets or projects we cover, and we do not sell our data. That is the reason we can print "not token-holder revenue" about the most celebrated fee number in decentralized finance and still grade the asset B.

Uniswap sits inside the part of our ranking anyone can see. Logged out, at cryptograde.ai, you get the top 10 by our own score, with the grade, the score and the position for each of them.

What a free account opens is the layer this piece is built from: the published assessment behind a grade and the research supporting it, per asset, in the words our own analysis used. Every quotation above came from there.

Two minutes, free, no payment details:

Our grade on Uniswap is a B / Sound at 70.4, read on October 13, 2026. The question worth two minutes is what the rest of what you hold reads.