Uniswap Activates Fee Switch, 1inch Launches Aqua, Lido Migrates $16B in ETH

Author: Claude, Shenchao TechFlow

DeepChain Overview: Over the past week, DeFi witnessed a wave of major launches. Uniswap activated the fee switch on its V4 pools, integrating protocol revenue into the UNI burn mechanism for the first time. 1inch publicly launched Aqua, replacing the traditional liquidity pool model with a "registration-based" system, covering 13 EVM chains on its first day. Lido rolled out its largest upgrade since V2 in 2023, initiating the migration of over 8 million ETH (approximately $16 billion) in validator consolidation, expected to reduce the total number of Ethereum validators by one-third. Kaito launched Katalyst, a creator incentive platform, officially implementing its data partnership with X. GRVT completed its TGE token launch, while Injective introduced Injective Mint, an institutional-grade RWA issuance platform.

Voted last week, implemented this week.

According to Crypto News, Uniswap governance approved two proposals: activating protocol fees for V2/V3 on Robinhood Chain and activating protocol fees for V4 on seven chains, including Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum. The fees will be directed to the TokenJar contract, bridged back to Ethereum mainnet, and used to repurchase and burn UNI tokens.

This is a watershed moment for the UNI token economy. Prior to the UNIfication proposal passing with 125 million votes in December 2025, UNI’s value proposition was limited to governance voting rights. With protocol fees activated, UNI has become a cash-flow token directly tied to protocol revenue. According to Crypto News, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams revealed on July 12 that the protocol’s daily fee income has reached $5.2 million. Over $6 billion in Uniswap trading volume has been generated in just 18 days since the launch of Robinhood Chain, making it the largest single source of growth to date.

The protocol fee is now live on 11 chains, including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism, and BNB Chain, with V4 and Robinhood Chain being the latest additions.

According to the official announcement from 1inch on July 28, 1inch Aqua has officially launched publicly, covering 13 EVM chains on its first day, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Robinhood Chain.

Aqua’s core idea is that liquidity providers don’t need to deposit tokens into a pool—instead, they simply connect their wallet, approve a token allowance, and create a position. The tokens remain in their own wallet, and the protocol only pulls the required tokens in a single atomic transaction when a trade matches the position’s conditions, returning both profits and fees. The same balance can simultaneously support multiple positions.

According to on-chain research data from Dune, cited by 1inch, 85% of concentrated liquidity on major DEXs was idle during the first half of 2026 (approximately $1.6 billion out of $1.84 billion), with an average of about $542 million per week completely outside the price range, resulting in approximately $150 million in fees wasted annually.

Aqua also introduces a "Verified Counterparty" mechanism: every trade must be executed by a verified market maker or arbitrage bot, with verification performed on-chain in real time. 1inch calls this the first implementation of risk-controlled counterparty verification in a liquidity venue. The accompanying liquidity incentive program is funded by 10 million 1INCH from the 1inch Foundation and 500,000 USDC from the DAO, distributed via Merkl.

According to The Block on July 27, Lido launched the Curated Module v2 (CMv2), marking the largest core protocol upgrade since V2 in May 2023.

Key figures: Lido will migrate over 265,000 validators from the legacy 0x01 withdrawal credentials to the new 0x02 standard following Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade. The 0x02 standard allows a single validator to hold up to 2,048 ETH (up from the previous limit of 32 ETH). According to The Defiant, Lido expects this consolidation to reduce the total number of Ethereum validators from approximately 880,000 to around 628,000—a decrease of about one-third—and lower the number of attestation messages per epoch by approximately 29%. The share of ETH staked on 0x02 validators will rise from about 32% to approximately 52%.

CMv2 also requires professional node operators to submit an ETH deposit for the first time. Previously, operator accountability relied entirely on reputation. Under the new rules, each operator provides a unified deposit (held in ETH, stETH, or wstETH) for all their validators, which may be slashed in the event of slashing, prolonged downtime, or violations of execution layer rewards.

LDO holders approved the upgrade in on-chain vote #203 from July 15 to 18, and the contract was deployed to mainnet on July 7 after audits by Certora, Statemind, MixBytes, and Composable Security.

According to Crypto Economy on July 29, Kaito AI has launched Kaito Katalyst, an incentive platform for creator marketing. Projects can pay based on actual conversion outcomes generated by creators, including mindshare, clicks, registrations, deposits, and in-app activities, with underlying verification powered by Brevis’s zero-knowledge proof technology and data partnerships with X.

Context is essential to understanding this message. In January 2026, X tightened its API policies, directly causing Kaito to shut down its "Yap-to-Earn" reward program, resulting in a 17% drop in the KAITO token price that day. According to Crypto Briefing, Kaito subsequently entered into a formal data agreement with X, restoring official direct access to X’s data streams. Katalyst is the first productized outcome of this partnership.

The KAITO token rose approximately 120% in July, climbing from below $0.50 at the start of the month to a peak near $1.30. Its market capitalization is around $300 million, with over 415,000 holders.

GRVT has completed its token launch. The decentralized derivatives exchange GRVT has officially issued its native token, GRVT. The airdrop registration, previously announced, closed on July 27, and the Multiplier Plan selection window closed on July 17. 28% of the token supply has been allocated to community airdrops.

Injective has launched Injective Mint. According to Injective’s official announcement, Injective Mint is an institutional RWA issuance platform that enables the creation and management of institutional-grade real-world asset tokens on the Injective chain. The launch follows closely after the Injective Washington Summit on July 16.

Changes to the Ethereum Foundation Board. Pavel Caversaccio, co-founder of SEAL 911, has joined the Ethereum Foundation Board. SEAL 911 is a white-hat security response team, and Caversaccio is also a well-known developer in the field of Solidity security audits.

Fluid launches Fluid Liquidity as a Service, a new product designed to help asset issuers establish on-chain liquidity.

Zama launches Confidential RFQ, an on-chain trading mechanism based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) that enables counterparties to match trades without revealing trade size or asset type.

Altura claims that user funds have been frozen by the bank. Specific details are pending further disclosure.

Variational receives funding from the Arbitrum Foundation to expand security audits and subsidize gas fees.

fxyz is now live, a native trading agent for Hyperliquid and Lighter.