Uniswap’s governance token UNI spiked roughly 40% within about 30 minutes after news that BlackRock was expanding into DeFi using Uniswap’s infrastructure and had made a strategic investment connected to the Uniswap ecosystem. The move centered on BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), a tokenized U.S. Treasury money market fund, becoming tradable via UniswapX, Uniswap Labs’ RFQ-based trading system, through a partnership with tokenization platform Securitize. According to Uniswap Labs’ February 11 announcement, Securitize would facilitate onchain trading of BUIDL shares on UniswapX, allowing qualified investors to swap BUIDL with approved counterparties using smart contracts for settlement. On the same news cycle, BlackRock disclosed a strategic investment in Uniswap and the purchase of an undisclosed amount of UNI, which many market participants interpreted as a direct endorsement of Uniswap’s role in institutional-grade tokenized assets. Social and trading data show retail traders quickly piled into UNI, driving the rapid price spike to around $4.57, before some of the gains were later retraced as large holders sold into the rally. The development is viewed as a significant milestone in the tokenization of real‑world assets (RWA) and the integration of traditional finance (TradFi) with decentralized finance (DeFi), since it connects the world’s largest asset manager with a leading decentralized exchange protocol. By making a U.S. Treasury–backed tokenized fund tradable on Uniswap’s rails and taking an equity and token position in the ecosystem, BlackRock signaled growing institutional interest in DeFi infrastructure, while also raising questions about how such integrations may affect governance dynamics, liquidity, and regulatory attention around major DeFi protocols.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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