BlackRock’s Uniswap Move Jolts UNI As Wall Street Tests DeFi Rails

This week’s 1-2 punch: a marquee institutional distribution deal pulls activity onto on-chain venues & a courtroom win lowers risk.

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Uniswap’s UNI token jumped more than 20% in a day after BlackRock disclosed it had acquired an undisclosed amount of UNI and would bring its tokenized Treasury fund shares onto Uniswap’s trading stack. The rally briefly pushed UNI above $4.30, even as Bitcoin and Ethereum were trading lower during the same session.

The integration centers on BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), whose shares are tokenized and backed by short-term US government assets such as Treasury bills, cash, and repurchase agreements.

Under the plan, BUIDL shares would become tradable via UniswapX, the protocol’s meta-aggregator, alongside an arrangement involving tokenization firm Securitize.

TradFi Giant Buys Governance Tokens & Picks a Venue

BlackRock’s decision to buy governance tokens is unusual by traditional asset-manager standards, and it immediately reframed UNI from a pure DeFi exposure into a proxy for institutional on-chain distribution.

Uniswap, which operates across multiple chains and is often treated as DeFi’s flagship exchange, holds roughly $3 billion in deposits based on DeFi analytics dashboards cited in market data.

The announcement also highlighted a key shift in how large institutions are approaching crypto: not just holding coins through exchange-traded products, but using decentralized venues as settlement and liquidity layers for tokenized securities.

Adding to the momentum, a US federal judge dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit targeting Uniswap Labs, the company that builds the protocol’s interface and tooling. The suit had been brought by entities tied to a rival automated market maker design, arguing Uniswap’s (UNI) early code infringed patented infrastructure.

The court found the patents leaned on abstract concepts—such as currency exchange—that generally aren’t eligible for protection under US patent law. While the ruling doesn’t eliminate all legal and regulatory risk for DeFi, it removes a specific overhang and may embolden developers who worry about litigation over foundational AMM mechanics.

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People Also Ask:

What exactly did BlackRock announce on February 11, 2026?

BlackRock partnered with Uniswap Labs and Securitize to make its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund), tradable on UniswapX, marking its first direct step into decentralized finance (DeFi) trading.

What is BUIDL and how big is it?

BUIDL is BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund backed by U.S. Treasuries and cash equivalents, offering yield to institutional investors; it manages around $2.2–2.4 billion in assets and is one of the largest tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) on public blockchains.

How does the Uniswap integration work?

Through UniswapX (an advanced request-for-quote protocol), whitelisted and pre-qualified institutional investors can now swap BUIDL for stablecoins like USDC on-chain around the clock, with Securitize handling compliance and KYC requirements.



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Samantha Diamo

Samantha is a journalist at DailyCoin, covering the latest stories and trends shaping the crypto and Web3 space.

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