Written by: Kaori, BlockBeats

Edited by: Jack, BlockBeats

On September 21, the Uniswap Foundation announced the joint launch of the education platform "Uniswap University" with DoDAO, which focuses on blockchain education. It is said that this is a comprehensive education platform tailored for everyone from beginners to experienced Uniswap v3 liquidity providers. It will provide participants with a structured learning path through four major sections: guides, Tidbits, simulations, and training, so that users can better participate in the DeFi world.

The last time the crypto field set off an education boom was when the Web3 education protocol Open Campus was launched on Binance Launchpad. The combination of Web3 and education, Web3 introductory and development education first entered the industry's vision. Although both aim to break down the barriers for ordinary Web2 users or developers to enter the Web3 world and become a catalyst for the large-scale adoption of Web3, Uniswap University is different from Open Campus in that it currently does not have any derivative content such as token economics. From its official website interface, there are only four major learning sections, no official docs, and no links to other platforms of Uniswap.

Uniswap University also does not provide any incentives. When you choose the chapter you want to learn and complete it, there is a very simple feedback mode. Yes, just like those learning websites used as after-class exercises in ordinary universities, there are also several exercises after each section, which is indeed very suitable for beginners to learn.

Uniswap is already the leader of DEX. Now that such a newcomer-friendly learning and education platform has been launched, there is still more room for discussion. It is worth mentioning that DoDAO, the partner chosen by Uniswap this time, aims to get 1 million people involved in DeFi, DAO and NFT by 2025.

Uniswap University Content Overview

Guides: This section provides easy-to-understand information, such as basic explanations of "What is DEX?" to advanced topics such as "Strategy Backtesting Tools", supplemented by explanatory videos and visuals.

Tidbits: "Not enough time? Master the basic concepts in just 30 seconds." Compared with the richness and diversity of the first part, the content of this section is very suitable for quick review or brief understanding of the content. The small card-style UI design feels like memorizing words.

Simulations: This section is the stage of in-depth practical learning. In this section, you can practice adding and removing liquidity and other scenarios, and you can also explore advanced position management tools. This is equivalent to a video tutorial, with demonstrations for each step of the operation. Compared with reading text tutorials, the video format is more friendly to crypto novices.

Courses: The fourth part of the website is currently two episodes of course teaching, which allows you to gain an in-depth understanding of Uniswap's structured courses, including basic concepts in "Uniswap Primer" to mastering strategies in "Liquidity Provider Course".

"User Education Experience" Essential for Crypto CEX

At present, it has not been found who is the main person behind the construction of Uniswap University, but as a decentralized DAO organization and DEX, launching a teaching platform that requires concentrated resources and energy to complete is something worthy of recognition. In contrast, CEX has greater advantages in this regard.

As the leader of CEX in the crypto world, Binance also has its own education platform-Binance Academy. There are also courses and teaching content available here, but from the "Learn & Earn" and Partnership in the website navigation bar, it can be seen that the biggest difference between Binance Academy and Uniswap University is that the ecosystem is more complex and more is desired.

In April this year, Binance launched Binance Sensei, an AI-based cryptocurrency knowledge assistant. Binance Sensei covers more than 1,000 articles and courses on Binance Academy, which can help users learn about cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3.

Image source: Binance Academy official website

Binance has been focusing on new education and user trading teaching for a long time. In 2022, CZ and other crypto executives cooperated with the online education platform Masterclass to launch crypto courses, with topics including the history of cryptocurrency, decentralization, Web3, DAO, NFT, volatility of market segments, etc.

In addition to Binance, another major CEX is also unwilling to lag behind in crypto education. On May 17, Coinbase launched the education platform Base Camp for Web3 developers. Previously, it was an education platform developed internally by Coinbase to speed up the onboarding of developers, running on the Ethereum Layer2 network Base infrastructure.

Unlike multi-functional learning platforms such as Coursera and edX, Base Camp includes on-chain exercises to provide developers with practical experience. At each learning milestone, developers will receive NFT badges. And there are community organizations that can be linked to everyone who uses Base Camp to develop. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong once divided the company's mission into four phases in his not-so-secret "Secret Master Plan", with the goal of each phase to have ten times the number of employees as before. Now it is necessary to attract 1 billion users from the third to the fourth phase. Coinbase believes that it will take 1 million developers to build useful dapps that these users will like. Jesse Pollak, head of the Coinbase protocol team, said in an interview that this means bringing a small part of the world's approximately 30 million Web2 developers to Web3, and this is the purpose of Base Camp. Back to Uniswap University, its mission is also to bring more people into the Web3 world. Will education be a breakthrough for DeFi liquidity?

The mission of Uniswap University is to “enable everyone to understand and obtain liquidity.” This mission tells us the “What” and “How” of Uniswap University, and the hidden meaning is the “Why” of launching this platform.

Uniswap benefited from the DeFi Summer of 2020 and has grown to become the largest DEX today. It has successfully saturated its current accessible market. Uniswap V3 accounts for 46.5% of all decentralized exchange trading volume. In addition, it set a record of cumulative trading volume of 1 trillion US dollars in May 2022.

But as more and more growing DEXs compete for market share, the monopoly of one is doomed to be unsustainable, which means that continuing to optimize DEX and squeeze the growth of existing markets will not be enough to continue its current trajectory. The most direct manifestation is that Uniswap's liquidity continues to be insufficient.

Image source: DeFiLlama

Related reading: "CEX VS DEX: A comparative study of the liquidity of Uniswap V3 and Binance"

According to Coingecko data, Uniswap accounted for 64% of the DEX market share in the first half of 2023, but in the first half of 2022, this figure was 89%.

There are over 13,000 liquidity pools on Uniswap V3. For example, about 1,500 of the Uniswap liquidity pools use wETH as the base or quote asset, accounting for about 11% of the total pools. Surprisingly, for a small token like CRV, Uniswap has lower liquidity compared to the top 5 most liquid CEXs that provide CRV-(w)ETH markets.

Compared to centralized trading platforms, Uniswap's trading operations are a bit difficult and the threshold is a bit high for newcomers. Perhaps this is the greatest significance of Uniswap University. Compared to introducing Web2 people to the crypto world, it is more urgent for Uniswap to attract more people to step into the world of DEX.

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