Why can uPEG surge dozens of times? Uniswap v4 Hook is changing the DeFi game

2026-05-18 17:23:04

Collection

Hook has turned the pool itself into a programmable financial interface. In the next round of DeFi competition, it's not just about who has more liquidity, but who can make this layer of interface into a stable, transparent, auditable, and distributable product.

Introduction: The Hook Ecosystem Projects Surge in Popularity

Recently, the Uniswap v4 Hook ecosystem has suddenly moved from the developer circle to the market forefront. Some previously niche Hook projects have gained significant attention in a short period. For example, uPEG combined Uniswap v4 Hook with on-chain generated pixel unicorn images, quickly gaining traction after being mentioned by OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander and members of the Uniswap ecosystem on social media, resulting in a short-term price increase of over 300%, with its market cap reaching tens of millions of dollars within two weeks. SATO combined the Bonding Curve issuance mechanism with Uniswap v4 Hook, viewed by the community as a "Hook version of on-chain token issuance experiment," with its market cap soaring from several million dollars to nearly 40 million dollars. Slonks sparked widespread community discussion due to the combination of NFT, Meme, and Hook mechanisms, with its floor price experiencing several-fold increases in a short time.

However, these projects are not just another batch of Meme coins. In the past, users primarily cared about narrative, community, price, and liquidity when buying a token. But during this round of Hook frenzy, discussions have shifted to another question: what gameplay does this trading pool itself offer? Some projects have written token issuance rules into the trading pool, some have made every transaction potentially generate on-chain images, and some have attempted to make fees, liquidity, and community rewards automatically change based on trading behavior. Uniswap v4 Hook has transformed the trading pool from merely a "currency exchange tool" hidden in the background into an on-chain product that can be designed, participated in, and spread.

This is precisely what makes Uniswap v4 Hook noteworthy. For ordinary users, Uniswap has historically been a decentralized exchange used for swapping currencies, with transactions completed by liquidity pools. Most rules regarding how the pool operates, how fees are collected, and how liquidity is managed were pre-set by the protocol, and users had little awareness of them. However, after Uniswap v4, Hook allows developers to add custom rules within the trading pool. A pool can be just an ordinary trading pool, or it can evolve into a pool that dynamically adjusts fees, automatically manages liquidity, issues tokens with a Bonding Curve, generates NFTs, or even incorporates community tasks and gaming mechanisms. Hook has turned the trading pool on Uniswap from backend infrastructure into an on-chain product that users can directly perceive, participate in, and spread. It is not just a technical upgrade for Uniswap; it may also become a crucial entry point for the next wave of DeFi, Meme, NFT, and on-chain social gameplay integration.

What are the hottest Hook projects recently?

1.1 Exploding on launch: uPEG's market cap surged from 0 to 34 million dollars in two weeks

1.2 SATO: Market cap reached nearly 40 million dollars in 4 days, Hook is changing the way on-chain assets are issued

1.3 Slonks: Price increased over 60 times in 6 days, community culture begins to enter the Pool

1.4 Flaunch: Market cap quickly surpassed 10 million dollars after launch, Hook is entering the "platform-based issuance" phase

1.5 Other popular projects under the Hook craze: Hook is forming a new on-chain gameplay ecosystem

Why has Hook become a hotspot recently?
Changes in Uniswap v4 mechanisms: Why is Hook important?

3.1 From standardized AMM to programmable AMM

3.2 What exactly is Hook?

3.3 The underlying architecture of v4: Singleton, Flash Accounting, and Custom Accounting

3.4 Native ETH and user experience improvements

Main innovation directions of Hook

4.1 Dynamic rates: Allowing the Pool to adjust prices based on market conditions

4.2 Automated liquidity management: From passive LP to strategic LP

4.3 Custom price curves: No longer limited to a single AMM model

4.4 Cross-protocol combinations: Pool becomes the DeFi routing layer

Risks and challenges of the Hook ecosystem
Trend assessment: How will Hook change the next generation of DeFi?
Conclusion

References

1. What are the hottest Hook projects recently?

The following cases are more suitable for ecological observation rather than investment judgment. Hook projects are generally in the early stages, with mechanisms, trading volumes, liquidity, and community enthusiasm changing rapidly, and some projects still lack sufficient public information. Therefore, analysis of such projects should focus on "what new paradigms they validate," rather than short-term price performance.

1.1 Exploding on launch: uPEG's market cap surged from 0 to 34 million dollars in two weeks

uPEG: How Hook turns the Pool into a cultural product

uPEG (0x44b28991B167582F18BA0259e0173176ca125505) is one of the most discussed projects in the recent Hook ecosystem. After its token launched, its market cap grew from 0 to approximately 34 million dollars within two weeks. After being mentioned by OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander, uPEG briefly surged over 3 times. At its peak, the price of a single uPEG token exceeded 2800 dollars. It rapidly spread across Crypto Twitter, Farcaster, and various DeFi communities, with related Pools and generated images creating a noticeable "screen-filling effect" in the community. Many users participated not out of trading demand, but because of its "cultural attributes" and "playability."

What makes it special is that it combines Hook, NFT culture, Uniswap brand symbols, and on-chain generated art. According to the official uPEG page, uPEG uses a custom v4 Hook to generate unique 24×24 collectible images on-chain. Each image is associated with a specific number of uPEG tokens, and when a transaction occurs, the Hook generates a hash containing information such as layers, colors, and original owners, which is then rendered into a unique image by an SVG renderer. This means that transactions are no longer just about swapping tokens; they simultaneously trigger the generation of on-chain collectibles. Users are not participating in traditional NFT minting or merely trading Meme coins; they are engaging in an on-chain collectible experience designed around Uniswap v4 Hook.

Why does the name "Unipeg" have inherent virality?

The name uPEG has inherent virality. The official narrative states: Uni + JPEG = uPEG. The NFT community has long referred to image-based assets as "JPEG," and Uniswap's unicorn brand symbol is highly tied to community culture. uPEG reconfigures these symbols, allowing Hook to transition from a developer context to a broader community dissemination context.

OpenSea executive retweets: Hook begins to enter the mainstream NFT community's view

Shortly after the uPEG project launched, it quickly fermented within the Twitter community and began to break through the previously niche circle of DeFi developers. Subsequently, OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander publicly retweeted related tweets on April 25, 2026, stating, "I'm very interested in this concept, let's buy a little and try." This further sparked interest in uPEG, allowing the NFT, Meme, and broader Crypto communities to engage in discussions, turning it into a "cross-circle cultural event."

Is uPEG an NFT? How do users participate?

Many users, upon first encountering uPEG, may wonder: is it an NFT or a Meme coin? In fact, a more accurate positioning for uPEG is as a "Hook Meme asset with NFT cultural symbols." It is not a traditional NFT image collectible, and users are not purchasing JPEG images on OpenSea; instead, they are directly participating in transactions through the Uniswap v4 Pool and Hook mechanism. In other words, what users are actually buying is: an on-chain asset with NFT cultural narrative operating within the Hook Pool. From a product experience perspective, when users purchase uPEG, they are not merely swapping a token; they are participating in a comprehensive on-chain experience that encompasses Meme attributes, NFT culture, Hook mechanisms, community interaction, and on-chain narratives. The Pool itself has begun to possess a "product feel."

Why has uPEG been able to drive the Hook ecosystem out of its niche?

From a price performance perspective, uPEG rapidly completed market cap growth shortly after its launch, forming a strong wealth effect driven by community sentiment. Although its price is highly volatile and carries obvious Meme attributes, what is truly noteworthy is the new paradigm it represents. uPEG proves that Hook can turn the Pool into a cultural medium.

In the past, the Pool was merely backend financial infrastructure: users came in to swap currencies and left after the transaction, without caring about what the pool itself looked like or what story it had. However, uPEG's Hook design is such that every time someone buys or sells tokens, an on-chain pixel unicorn image is automatically generated; its trading pool not only facilitates token transactions but also continuously "grows" new images on-chain. These images are public and immutable, and anyone can view, collect, or screenshot and share them.

Thus, the pool itself becomes a product that continuously produces content. Users are not just "buying a coin," but participating in an ongoing on-chain creative process. The pool has outputs, rules, and visible results: it can be narrated (what mechanism is this), collected (how many images have been generated), and disseminated (people continuously screenshot and showcase on social media). This has implications for future NFT and Meme projects. The next generation of on-chain assets may no longer revolve solely around Token contracts or NFT contracts, but rather around a Pool that has rules, generation logic, and trading feedback.

1.2 SATO: Market cap reached nearly 40 million dollars in 4 days, Hook is changing the way on-chain assets are issued

SATO: How Hook reconstructs on-chain asset issuance

SATO (0x829f4B62EEBE12Af653b4dD4fFc480966F7d7f09) is also one of the hottest projects in the recent Hook ecosystem. Within just a few days of its launch, its market cap approached 40 million dollars. In its early stages, it surged from a price range below 70 dollars to around 1890 dollars, experiencing extreme levels of growth within 6 days. It has been widely discussed in the community as it is seen as a representative case of the combination of Hook and asset issuance, showcasing a new idea of "placing issuance and trading in the same pool."

How are traditional Meme coins issued?

The conventional process is: the project team first writes a token contract and deploys it on-chain; then creates a trading pool and manually adds an initial liquidity amount; next, they promote it on social media to attract the community to buy and sell. It can be seen that the steps of issuance, pricing, liquidity, and community dissemination are separate: first issuance, then pricing, and then finding ways to get people to trade. The project team may also retain a large number of tokens, which can be used to manipulate prices in the secondary market at any time.

SATO's approach is different

It directly writes the "issuance" into the rules of the trading pool. The specific logic is: when users buy tokens, the price automatically rises: the more people buy, the higher the price goes; when more people sell, the price automatically drops. This mechanism is called Bonding Curve, an algorithmic pricing logic that does not rely on manual manipulation by the project team. The entire process is automatically executed by Hook within the Uniswap v4 Pool. You buy, I place an order, and the system automatically adjusts the price without requiring the project team to pre-inject liquidity or a centralized team to operate in the background. The users' buying behavior itself drives price changes and liquidity generation.

This is somewhat similar to Pump.fun on Solana: both make issuance and trading simpler and more automated. However, the directions are different: Pump.fun operates on an independent protocol, lowering the barrier for Meme coin issuance; Hook projects like SATO attempt to embed the issuance logic directly into the Uniswap v4 trading pool, turning the trading pool itself into a self-growing market for price and liquidity issuance.

Of course, this mechanism also has obvious risks. Bonding Curve can create a strong wealth effect in the early stages: the earlier you buy, the cheaper it is, while later buyers often have to pay a higher price. Conversely, when buying enthusiasm wanes, later users who take over bear greater risks. The more complex the Hook mechanism, the harder it is for ordinary users to determine their actual buying costs, how much they can get back upon exit, and where the current price stands on the curve. Therefore, when studying such projects, it is necessary to distinguish between two things: whether this mechanism has innovative value and whether this asset is worth buying are two different matters.

1.3 Slonks: Price increased over 60 times in 6 days, community culture begins to enter the Pool

Slonks: Community culture begins to enter the Pool

Slonks is one of the fastest-spreading projects in the recent Hook ecosystem and is the most typical case of "wealth effect" in this round of Uniswap v4 Hook's popularity. Within just a few days after its launch, the token price surged over 60 times, rapidly filling social media feeds on Crypto Twitter, Farcaster, and various Meme communities, becoming one of the unavoidable projects in market discussions about the Hook ecosystem. Its core gameplay deeply binds on-chain trading behavior with community interaction, making every transaction a part of some on-chain activity, not just "buying coins."

What does it mean to "write community behavior into Pool rules"?

The traditional DeFi logic is: the Pool is a financial tool, users come to swap currencies and leave. Where is the community? On Twitter, Discord, Telegram, completely disconnected from the on-chain trading pool. Participating in the community on social media and trading on-chain are two entirely separate matters. Hook has changed this. It allows trading behavior itself to carry "event" attributes. For example:

Completing a buy or sell can automatically grant you an on-chain achievement badge or NFT.
The more frequently you trade, the higher your level in the community, potentially enjoying more fee discounts.
The fee income from the pool can automatically flow back to the community treasury for rewards, activities, or ecosystem development.
Completing a transaction within a specific time window may trigger a "game event," such as leaderboard rewards, additional burn mechanisms, or the minting of community-exclusive NFTs.
Holding amounts, transaction counts, and the duration of providing liquidity can collectively determine your rights in the community.

The Pool has become a "rule-based on-chain activity space." Users are not just completing transaction actions; they are participating in an ongoing on-chain community product.

How does this relate to traditional Meme, GameFi, and SocialFi?

The core of Meme culture is community dissemination and emotional consensus. However, the holding behavior of traditional Meme coins is static: you buy, wait for it to rise, and the atmosphere relies on Twitter. GameFi originally required independently developing a complete set of game logic, which had a high barrier. SocialFi is similar; the community is online, but on-chain behavior and community identity are often disconnected. Hook provides a new soil for these directions: the trading pool itself can carry gameplay. When you buy a Meme token, the system tells you, "your transaction generated an on-chain collectible," adding a sense of "participation" to a static buying action. You accomplish something, and the system gives you visible feedback that can be disseminated, collected, or even yield community rights in the future. This is the direction Slonks is attempting: expanding DeFi from "yield-driven" to "experience-driven." Users are not just pursuing profits but seeking a sense of participation, identity, and community belonging. These do not exist in traditional finance but can be realized through code in the on-chain world.

However, the risks of this direction also need to be clearly understood. Hook makes the trading pool programmable, which also means it can become increasingly complex. The fancier the mechanism design, the harder it is for ordinary users to judge: what rules are they actually subject to? Is liquidity sufficient upon exit? Is there real community value supporting the leaderboard and level systems? If a project's Hook mechanism is merely for short-term price manipulation without genuine community engagement and transparent rules, it is essentially just using complex code to wrap speculative behavior. Hook can become an innovative tool or a complex packaging tool. The core standard for differentiation is: do the rules of this pool encourage participants to stay long-term, or do they entice participants to enter quickly and cash out?

1.4 Flaunch: Market cap quickly surpassed 10 million dollars after launch, Hook is entering the "platform-based issuance" phase

Flaunch: Hook is entering the "platform-based issuance" phase

Flaunch quickly surpassed a market cap of 10 million dollars shortly after its launch, sparking extensive discussions within developer communities and the Meme issuance circle. Its goal can be summarized in one sentence: to enable project teams without technical knowledge to issue their own tokens and liquidity using the Hook mechanism.

In web3, a Launchpad refers to: a ready-made tool or template where project teams only need to fill in their parameters (such as token name, total supply, initial price) to quickly launch a project without needing to develop smart contracts from scratch, build a frontend, or find liquidity. For example, Pump.fun on Solana exemplifies typical Launchpad logic: issuing Meme coins becomes extremely simple, uploading images, filling in parameters, and paying a small fee can automatically complete issuance and initial trading. Flaunch attempts to do something similar in the Ethereum ecosystem, but using the Uniswap v4 Hook mechanism. It encapsulates rules for Bonding Curve issuance, liquidity management, and community incentives into a platform tool. Project teams can come in without needing to write Hook code; they simply choose "which issuance model they want" and fill in a few parameters, and the system will automatically create a rule-based trading pool for them.

Why is this worth noting? Under traditional issuance models, a project team wanting to issue assets has to do a lot of work: find developers to write contracts, deploy trading pools, figure out how to inject initial liquidity, and design community incentive rules, all of which are costly and time-consuming. The emergence of platforms like Flaunch aims to package these steps of "issuance + trading + liquidity + community incentives" into a reusable template. Project teams do not need to write Hook from scratch; they just need to select a template, modify parameters (such as fee ratios, reward rules, community treasury distribution methods), and they can launch a trading pool with complete rules.

If this path is successful, the Hook ecosystem may see a trend of "template-based issuance." Project teams will not need to deeply understand Hook technology; they just need to grasp a few models: how to implement dynamic rates, how to configure Bonding Curves, and how to write trading mining rules. Then they can select a template, modify parameters, and go live. This transforms Hook from a "developer-exclusive tool" into a "regular weapon for ordinary project teams." Issuing tokens, building pools, and designing incentives, tasks that previously required professional teams, may soon be accomplished by founders without technical backgrounds.

However, this direction also has obvious side effects. Lowering the barrier means a significant increase in supply. If anyone can quickly launch a trading pool with Hook, a large number of new projects will emerge in the short term, including serious ones, but also many of varying quality or purely speculative projects. For users, this increases the difficulty of filtering; for the market, liquidity will be dispersed across numerous small pools, thinning the depth of individual pools; for serious project teams, the competitive noise will also grow. More importantly, an increase in issuance tools does not mean stronger filtering and quality control mechanisms. If a platform has hundreds of template-based projects, how can users determine which ones are worth participating in? Which ones may have hidden rules? Which liquidity might dry up at critical moments? These are questions that the platform itself needs to address, rather than just providing "one-click token issuance."

Therefore, what the Hook ecosystem truly lacks are filtering mechanisms, audit transparency, frontend risk warnings, and project background checks. If these supporting elements do not keep up, the more widespread template-based issuance becomes, the higher the probability that ordinary users will fall into pitfalls. Flaunch aims to "simplify issuance," but what the market truly needs is "to ensure that even simple issuance has sufficient risk visibility."

1.5 Other popular projects under the Hook craze: Hook is forming a new on-chain gameplay ecosystem

In addition to uPEG, $SATO, and Slonks, several other representative popular projects have emerged in the recent Hook ecosystem. Although these projects have different directions, they are all validating the same thing: Uniswap v4 Hook is gradually transforming the Pool from a mere liquidity tool into an on-chain application layer with financial logic, community gameplay, and dissemination capabilities.

Among them, Lo0p is currently a representative strategy-based Hook project that has garnered attention from developers. Compared to Meme narratives, Lo0p leans more towards underlying strategic logic, attempting to utilize Hook to enable the Pool to have automated market-making and dynamic liquidity management capabilities. The system can automatically adjust liquidity ranges and fee structures based on market fluctuations, evolving the Pool from a "passive liquidity pool" to an "active market-making system." The significance of such projects lies in their ability to make the market aware that in the future, Hook will not only be a Meme tool but may also become the infrastructure for on-chain quantitative strategies and asset management systems.

FLOOD, on the other hand, focuses more on liquidity mechanism innovation. In traditional AMMs, LPs primarily provide funds to earn fees, while FLOOD-like projects are beginning to attempt to use Hook to dynamically adjust slippage, fee distribution, and liquidity paths, turning liquidity itself into a "programmable asset." This model is essentially reconstructing the Pool's control over capital efficiency and trading behavior.

In addition to these infrastructure-oriented projects, a large number of Meme and community-driven projects have also emerged in the recent Hook ecosystem. For example, some new projects are starting to use Hook for dynamic tax rates, automatic burns, trading event triggers, and community reward mechanisms, making transactions themselves more interactive. Users are participating not just in Token trading but in an on-chain system with game rules and community gameplay.

Recent projects that have garnered significant community discussion include:

HookFi: Focuses on a dynamic fee model that automatically adjusts fees based on market fluctuations, attempting to reduce LP impermanent loss;
HookSwap: Explores personalized trading pools based on Hook, allowing different Pools to have different trading rules;
v4Meme: Combines Meme coin issuance with Hook mechanisms to enhance community dissemination and Pool interaction;
Aloe Hooks: Leans towards DeFi infrastructure, attempting to optimize liquidity management and automatic rebalancing through Hook;
Bunni v2: Integrates v4 Hook into the existing Uniswap LP management framework to enhance proactive liquidity capabilities;
Cork Protocol: Explores the direction of combining Hook with yield strategies and risk management;

Although these projects are still in the early stages, they have already demonstrated several clear trends in the Hook ecosystem. Pools are beginning to possess product attributes. In the past, users were more about "using protocols," but now an increasing number of users are "participating in gameplay." Secondly, Hook significantly lowers the barriers to on-chain financial innovation. Many mechanisms that previously required developing a complete protocol can now be directly embedded into the Uniswap Pool lifecycle. Furthermore, Hook is blurring the boundaries between DeFi, Meme, NFT, SocialFi, and GameFi. In the future, users may enter not just a trading pool but an on-chain application that simultaneously possesses financial logic, community interaction, and dissemination capabilities. This is why more and more people believe that the most important change in Uniswap v4 is not just the AMM upgrade, but the redefinition of how on-chain applications are constructed.

2. Why has Hook become a hotspot recently?

Uniswap v4 officially launched on January 31, 2025, supporting multiple blockchains such as Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base. At launch, Uniswap emphasized that v4 is one of the most customizable and cost-effective versions in the protocol's history and revealed that many Hook projects are already in development, covering areas like dynamic rates and automated liquidity management. However, Hook truly transitioned from the technical circle to the mass market due to a series of experimental projects that allowed ordinary users to intuitively feel for the first time that a trading pool can also have narratives, gameplay, and even the ability to issue new assets. Behind the hype, there are three key driving forces.

First, Hook lowers the barriers to on-chain financial innovation. In the past, if a developer wanted to implement "Bonding Curve issuance" (a mechanism where token prices automatically rise with purchase volume), "dynamic fees" (where transaction fees automatically adjust with market fluctuations), or "automated community rewards distribution," they typically needed to develop an independent protocol from scratch: writing contracts, building frontends, guiding liquidity, which is costly and time-consuming. After Uniswap v4, these logics can be directly embedded into the lifecycle of Uniswap's trading pools. Developers no longer need to build markets from scratch; they just need to write Hooks and attach them to existing trading pools. What only professional teams could do before can now be attempted by an experienced developer.

Second, trading pools themselves are beginning to possess "product" attributes. The previous logic was: users choose tokens, and tokens choose pools. The pool was merely backend infrastructure, and users were unaware of its existence. However, after the emergence of Hook, pools can have their own rules, gameplay, and corresponding asset issuance logic. For example, some pools design "buying tokens" as part of "participating in community activities"; some pools generate an image or NFT on-chain with every transaction; some pools automatically change fees based on trading activity. Pools are no longer just "currency exchange tools," but are becoming products that users can perceive, participate in, and even disseminate. This is attractive to Meme culture, NFT gameplay, and on-chain social interactions, as trading behavior itself can become part of the product experience.

Third, Uniswap's inherent liquidity and brand network effects. Hook projects may not necessarily receive official recommendations from Uniswap, but they naturally stand on the infrastructure of one of the largest decentralized exchanges in the world. Once a Hook project creates an interesting gameplay, Uniswap's existing millions of users and billions in liquidity become its most direct market base. Attention is easier to concentrate, and dissemination paths are shorter. It is not building a market from scratch but experimenting while standing on the shoulders of giants.

Therefore, the current hype around Hook is a result of the convergence of technical openness, new asset issuance methods, Meme culture dissemination, and changes in on-chain product forms, attracting developers, traders, Meme players, and institutional observers alike.

3. Changes in Uniswap v4 mechanisms: Why is Hook important?

If we understand Uniswap as an "automated currency exchange market," then the core task of past generations of Uniswap has primarily been to make this market more user-friendly, cost-effective, and efficient. v1 achieved automatic currency exchange on-chain without an order book; v2 allowed more ERC-20 tokens to trade directly with each other; v3 improved capital efficiency by concentrating liquidity, allowing funds to be more precisely placed in active price ranges. However, these versions share a common characteristic: the core rules of the trading pool are essentially pre-written. How fees are collected, how liquidity is allocated, and how transactions are executed are mostly set by the protocol. Users and developers can use Uniswap within these rules but find it challenging to change the operation of the trading pool itself. Uniswap v4's Hook changes this. Hook allows developers to add custom rules during the operation of the trading pool. The trading pool is no longer just a fixed currency exchange tool but can transform into different types of on-chain products based on different projects, assets, and market conditions. This is why v4 is seen by many as a key step for Uniswap to transition from "standardized AMM" to "programmable AMM."

3.1 From standardized AMM to programmable AMM

The advantage of traditional AMMs is their simplicity, transparency, and automation. Taking Uniswap v2 as an example, its trading pool operates based on a classic formula: x * y = k. Here, x and y can be understood as the quantities of two assets in the pool, and k is a relatively stable value. Users do not need to wait for buyers or sellers to place orders, nor do they need professional market makers to quote. As long as there is liquidity in the pool, transactions can be completed automatically. This mechanism is very suitable for the early development of DeFi, being simple and reliable. However, the problem is also evident: the rules are too fixed. The market is not always stable. For instance, during significant market fluctuations, LPs may bear higher impermanent losses. If transaction fees remain fixed, they may not adequately compensate for their risks. Conversely, during stable market conditions, if fees are too high, traders may find it unappealing, leading to a potential shift in trading volume to other platforms.

Although v3 introduced concentrated liquidity, allowing LPs to choose price ranges, it also brought new management challenges. Once the price moves outside the range set by LPs, funds can no longer effectively market make, and LPs need to manually adjust their positions. For ordinary users, this becomes less about "depositing to earn fees" and more about executing a professional market-making strategy.

v4's Hook attempts to address the issue of "too rigid pool rules." With Hook, trading pools can execute different logics based on varying conditions. For example:

When market volatility increases, fees can be automatically raised to better compensate LP risks.
When the market is stable, fees can be automatically lowered to attract more trading volume.
When prices deviate from a certain range, liquidity strategies can be automatically adjusted.
When users trade, additional rewards, NFT generation, or community mechanisms can be triggered.
When project teams issue new assets, the issuance curve can be directly written into the trading pool.

This means that the competitive dimensions of AMMs are changing. In the past, the primary comparisons were which protocol had higher TVL, lower fees, and better capital efficiency. In the future, comparisons will also include: which pool has smarter strategies, which pool has more transparent rules, which pool has better risk control, and which pool is easier for users to understand and use.

3.2 What exactly is Hook?

Simply put, Hook is a piece of external smart contract logic attached to Uniswap v4 trading pools. When a trading pool reaches certain key steps, the Hook can be triggered. For example, before and after a trade, before and after adding liquidity, and before and after removing liquidity, the Hook has opportunities to execute pre-written logic. According to Uniswap's official documentation, v4 Hooks can cover these nodes:

beforeInitialize / afterInitialize: before and after the pool is initialized.
beforeAddLiquidity / afterAddLiquidity: before and after adding liquidity.
beforeRemoveLiquidity / afterRemoveLiquidity: before and after removing liquidity.
beforeSwap / afterSwap: before and after the trade.
beforeDonate / afterDonate: before and after donating fees or assets to LPs.

These names may seem technical, but the meaning is not complex. They are essentially asking: when the pool is about to initialize, when users are about to add funds, when users are about to withdraw funds, when users are about to swap currencies, and when someone is about to give LPs extra earnings, can developers add a segment of custom logic before and after? The answer in v4 is: yes. However, Hook does not mean that developers can arbitrarily modify Uniswap. Here are a few key points to understand:

(1) Hook is not mandatory. Ordinary pools can choose not to use Hooks and continue with simpler trading logic.

(2) A pool can only have one Hook, but one Hook can serve multiple pools. If a Hook model is mature enough, it can be reused by multiple projects like a standard component.

(3) The permissions of Hooks are not arbitrarily declared but are encoded in the contract address. Uniswap v4's core contract, PoolManager, will determine whether a Hook can be called at specific nodes based on these permissions. The benefit of this approach is that the boundaries of Hook's capabilities are easier to identify, making it more convenient for frontends, auditors, and users to assess risks.

(4) Hooks are not meant to arbitrarily modify Uniswap's core logic. They are more like inserting an additional rule when the trading pool reaches key steps. For example, dynamically adjusting fees, changing fee distribution, triggering rewards, recording states, or influencing asset settlement methods through Custom Accounting.

Thus, the core significance of Hook is not "making Uniswap complex," but allowing different trading pools to have different rules.

3.3 The underlying architecture of v4: Singleton, Flash Accounting, and Custom Accounting

The reason Hook can function in v4 is not only because Uniswap opened several interfaces but also because v4's underlying architecture underwent significant upgrades. The three key concepts are: Singleton, Flash Accounting, and Custom Accounting.

First, let's look at Singleton, which is a singleton architecture. In past versions, creating a new trading pool often required deploying or relying on independent pool contracts. This is like having to build a new house every time a new store opens, which incurs high costs. v4's approach is different. It manages all trading pools under a single core contract, PoolManager. Creating a new pool no longer feels like redeploying a complete contract but rather like registering a new room within the same system. This brings two benefits. First, the cost of building pools is reduced. Developers can create new pools at a lower cost, testing new trading rules, issuance mechanisms, or community gameplay. Second, multi-pool interactions become more efficient. Since all pools are managed under a unified architecture, executing complex trading paths and Hook logic will be smoother.

Next, Flash Accounting refers to a method of accounting that reduces the need for multiple transfers during traditional trading processes, where assets often need to be transferred in and out at various steps. If a transaction goes through multiple pools, it’s like having to settle accounts separately at each counter, making the process cumbersome and more gas-intensive. v4's Flash Accounting operates more like recording transactions first and settling the net amount at the end. During the transaction process, the system first records asset changes, and only settles the net amount when operations are complete. This can reduce the number of intermediate transfers, lowering the costs of multi-hop transactions and complex Hook operations.

Finally, Custom Accounting allows for custom adjustments to the quantities of assets involved in trading or liquidity operations. For example, a Hook can: charge an additional fee, set withdrawal or exit fees, change how fees are distributed among LPs, project teams, and the community, design special price curves, or alter asset settlement results under specific conditions. This is why v4 Hooks are not just "dynamic fee tools." Dynamic rates are just one application. The greater imaginative space lies in developers being able to design a complete set of new financial rules around the trading pool.

3.4 Native ETH and user experience improvements

In addition to Hook, v4 also includes a more direct improvement for ordinary users: re-supporting Native ETH. In some trading scenarios, users previously needed to repeatedly convert between ETH and WETH. After reintroducing support for Native ETH, users can trade directly with ETH in certain scenarios, leading to a smoother experience and helping to reduce gas consumption. While this may not seem as newsworthy as Hook, it is important. Because truly good infrastructure should leave complexity at the bottom and provide a simple experience for users.

However, Hook also introduces a new challenge: the more programmable the trading pool becomes, the more users need to know what rules they are entering. In the past, users using Uniswap primarily focused on token prices, slippage, and fees. In the Hook ecosystem, users need to ask a few more questions: Does this pool have additional fees? Will the rates change at any time? Are there restrictions on selling? How are fees distributed? If these questions are not clear, ordinary users can easily incur losses without understanding the rules.

Therefore, the direction of v4 is not to require users to learn more technical details but to demand better transparency from the ecosystem. Users do not necessarily need to understand every line of Hook code, but they should clearly know: how this pool differs from ordinary pools, what additional risks they are assuming, and what extra experiences they might gain.

4. Main innovation directions of Hook

4.1 Dynamic rates: Allowing the Pool to adjust prices based on market conditions

Dynamic rates are the easiest direction to understand and the most likely to exist long-term for Hook. First, let's explain what rates are: when you trade on Uniswap, each transaction requires a certain percentage of fees, which are distributed to the LPs providing liquidity. Traditional AMM rates are fixed; for example, Uniswap v2 defaults to 0.3%, which does not adjust with market changes. However, the market is not static. Sometimes, when significant news breaks, LPs bear greater risks; if prices surge and then drop back quickly, LPs may incur losses greater than the fees they earn. Theoretically, rates should be higher during such times to compensate for LP risks. But fixed rates cannot achieve this. Conversely, during stable market conditions, if rates are too high, traders may find it unappealing and shift to other platforms. Fixed rates may not be optimal in both scenarios.

Hook makes it possible for rates to "move." Developers can write a set of rules that automatically adjust rates based on actual market conditions. For example:

When prices are highly volatile, rates can be automatically raised to better compensate LP risks.
When the market is stable, rates can be automatically lowered to attract more traders.

This design allows LPs not to bear risks that do not match their returns, and traders do not need to pay more fees when they shouldn't be saving money. Different types of assets (such as mainstream coins and Meme coins) can also have different rate models, making it more flexible. However, dynamic rates also have a natural side effect: traders may not be clear on how much fee they are actually being charged. Therefore, the core of dynamic rates is not just that they "change," but that they are explainable, verifiable, and predictable. Users should clearly know: what the current rate is, why it changes, and how it might adjust next.

4.2 Automated liquidity management: From passive LP to strategic LP

Uniswap v3 introduced the "concentrated liquidity" mechanism, which simply means that LPs can concentrate their funds within a certain price range rather than spreading them evenly across the entire price range. The benefit of this is higher capital efficiency, allowing the same amount of money to earn more fees. However, the trade-off is that LPs need to determine where to place their funds and continuously monitor market changes; if the price moves out of their set range, their funds stop earning fees. This shifts the role of LPs from "passively depositing to earn interest" to "actively managing market-making." This is not a problem for professional market makers, but ordinary users often lack the time, energy, or knowledge to continuously adjust their positions. As a result, many people think they are "earning fees passively," but in reality, due to not adjusting their positions in time, their capital efficiency is low. In the later stages of v3, many third-party tools and bots began offering "automated adjustment" services to help LPs automatically follow prices and adjust ranges. However, these tools are mostly external services and are separate from Uniswap itself.

v4's Hook begins to write these capabilities directly into the Pool logic. In the future, users will not need to use third-party tools; they just need to select a preferred "strategy" when choosing to provide liquidity. For example:

Conservative strategy: automatically maintains a wide price range, yielding stable but not high returns.
Aggressive strategy: concentrates on a narrow range, achieving high capital efficiency but requiring greater risk.
Smart strategy: automatically adjusts the range following market fluctuations without manual user operation.

This is akin to transitioning from "choosing stocks to trade" to "entrusting money to professional funds for management." Users do not need to understand complex parameters; the system automatically manages for them. Additionally, Hook can also interact with lending, derivatives, and other protocols, such as automatically hedging while providing liquidity to reduce the risk of liquidation. Capital utilization efficiency can be higher. Thus, v4 gradually transforms LPs from "passively depositing" to "on-chain strategy management." Ordinary people can also participate in complex market-making without needing to manually track the market.

4.3 Custom price curves: No longer limited to a single AMM model

Traditional AMM price calculations all follow the same formula (e.g., x * y = k), with all trading pools using the same logic. This is sufficient for most scenarios but may not be suitable for all types of assets. v4 Hook, in conjunction with Custom Accounting, allows developers to design different price calculation rules for different types of assets. For example:

1. Meme coins: use smoother price curves to reduce extreme price fluctuations when early buying is strong, leading to healthier trends.
2. Stablecoin pools: optimize for low slippage experiences, ensuring large trades do not incur losses due to price slippage.
3. NFTs or game items: prices can be automatically adjusted based on rarity and inventory levels, aligning more closely with real market pricing logic.
4. Risk control mechanisms can also be added, such as setting "additional exit fees" for highly volatile assets to protect the Pool and LPs from significant shocks.

v4 transforms Uniswap into a "trading platform that can use multiple formulas." Different assets can choose the pricing rules that best suit them rather than being forced to adopt a generic template.

4.4 Cross-protocol combinations: Pool becomes the DeFi routing layer

In traditional Uniswap, a Swap (transaction) is simply the most basic "buy or sell currency," where you give A and receive B, ending the transaction. However, with the introduction of Hook in v4, the boundaries of the Pool have been opened. A transaction not only completes an asset exchange but can also trigger a series of other operations, like an automated assembly line. For example:

1. You swap ETH for USDC, and after the transaction, the system automatically deposits the temporarily unused ETH into a yield protocol to earn extra interest.
2. After providing liquidity, the system automatically adjusts your position ratios without requiring manual operation.
3. If you make a large transaction, the Hook can automatically split it into smaller orders to gradually execute, reducing the impact on prices.
4. When prices fluctuate significantly, the system can automatically adjust the collateral rates of lending protocols to avoid liquidation.
5. Fees are no longer just "LP takes all," but can be split, with part going to LPs, part entering the community treasury, and part used for governance incentives, with the distribution method determined by the project team.

This transforms the Pool from a "transaction execution point" into a "financial operation orchestration layer." A Swap can simultaneously connect lending markets, yield protocols, derivative tools, and governance systems, triggering an entire financial assembly line with one click. However, this also brings an important issue: increased complexity means increased risk. Previously, AMMs were relatively closed systems, with a low probability of issues arising within. Now that Pools connect to more external protocols, any problem in one link (external protocol being attacked, oracle errors, Hook code vulnerabilities) could impact the entire Pool. Thus, v4 is gradually transforming Uniswap from a "trading protocol" into an "on-chain financial routing layer," enhancing its functionality but also increasing complexity and raising the requirements for security audits.

5. Risks and challenges of the Hook ecosystem

The innovation space of Hook is vast, but the risks cannot be overlooked. Uniswap's past safety largely stemmed from its simple rules and clear logic, allowing users to know what they were doing. With the introduction of Hook, different Pools can have completely different rules, leading to rapid differentiation in risk models.

Smart contract risks. Each Hook is essentially a piece of independent code. If there are vulnerabilities in the code, it could affect the safety of users' funds. This is especially true for Hooks involving cross-protocol calls, dynamic rates, and external data feeds (oracles), which have larger attack surfaces. Because these Hooks rely on external systems, if something goes wrong externally, the Hook itself will also encounter issues.

MEV risks. MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) simply refers to: bots or attackers exploiting the order of blockchain transactions for arbitrage. In the Hook ecosystem, because trading rules are more complex (for example, rates may change, and transactions may trigger rewards), it may provide new opportunities for attackers. For instance, bots may know in advance that a pool's rate is about to increase and buy in early; or during high volatility, they may buy low and sell high around user transactions. Such attacks are particularly common in pools with high Meme popularity.

User understanding costs. In the past, users participating in a pool only needed to care about three things: token prices, slippage, and fees. In the Hook era, users need to ask a few more questions: Does this pool have additional fees? Will rates change at any time? Are there restrictions on selling? How are fees distributed? If these questions are not clear, ordinary users can easily incur losses without understanding the rules.

Routing and distribution issues. A key point many people overlook is that just because Hooks are developed does not mean they will be displayed on Uniswap's frontend. The official documentation clearly states that whether they receive routing traffic depends on the integration by developers and frontend teams. This means that the value of Hooks is not just about "whether they can be implemented," but also about "whether they can be discovered by users." Those who can enter mainstream wallets, aggregators, and frontends will gain more traffic.

Liquidity fragmentation. If many pools use different Hook rules, the same coin may exist in several pools with different rules. Traders and automated trading bots need to determine which pool is optimal, which price is good, which risk is low, and which execution is stable. This will drive the demand for professional routing tools and risk assessment tools. For ordinary users, the filtering costs will also be higher.

6. Trend assessment: How will Hook change the next generation of DeFi?

Pools will become products, not just infrastructure

The biggest change with Hook is that it brings Pools from being "backend tools" to "frontend products." In the past, users participating in DeFi were concerned with "whether this coin will rise in the future," and the Pool itself rarely became the center of discussion. However, cases like uPEG, SATO, and Flaunch demonstrate that a pool can have its own rules, gameplay, and culture, and users will participate because "the mechanism of this pool is interesting," not just because "this coin is rising." In the future, when users enter DeFi, they may not only ask "which coin to buy," but also inquire "what are the rules of this pool?"

The boundaries between DeFi, Meme, NFT, and GameFi will continue to blur

Hook makes it easier to combine financial transactions with cultural expression. Meme is not just about trading coins; it can also have on-chain issuance curves; NFTs are not just collectibles; they can be triggered by trading behavior; GameFi does not need to independently develop a game engine; it can directly turn Swaps into game events; SocialFi does not need to build a separate community identity system; LPs and trading records themselves serve as identity credentials. In the future, we may see a batch of products that are neither purely DEX, nor purely NFT or pure games, but rather hybrid products built around trading pools. This form has almost no counterpart in traditional finance.

Strategic liquidity may become a long-term mainline

In the short term, the most likely to gain traction are Meme and cultural projects, but in the long term, what may hold sustainable value is "making LPs more at ease and making trading safer" through strategic liquidity. Specific directions include: automated adjustment LP strategies, dynamic rate protection mechanisms, stablecoin-specific pools, risk control pools for long-tail assets, and structured products combining lending and derivatives. These directions may not have the explosive power of Memes, but they are supported by genuine demand.

Safety and transparency will become core barriers in the ecosystem

The more open Hook becomes, the more a standardized safety framework is needed. In the future, high-quality Hook projects worth paying attention to may need to possess these characteristics: open code, third-party audits, clear fee rules, risk warnings on the frontend, readable on-chain parameters, and verifiable permission boundaries. These are not "bonus points," but "entry tickets." Projects that cannot meet these criteria will have decreasing credibility in future competition.

7. Conclusion

Uniswap v4 Hook is not just a functional upgrade of AMM. It pushes Uniswap from a standardized trading protocol to a programmable financial application platform. From v1 to v3, the main focus was on "how to trade more efficiently"; v4 begins to ask "what logic can the trading pool carry."

In the short term, uPEG, SATO, and Flaunch have shown the market that Hook can create new asset issuance and community dissemination methods. In the medium term, dynamic rates, proactive liquidity management, and strategic Pools may be key to attracting long-term capital. In the long term, Hook may drive DeFi from "protocol stacking" to "pool-level applications": a Pool can encompass trading, issuance, fees, rewards, risk control, and community logic.

Risks also sink into each Pool. In the future, users cannot just focus on Tokens; they must also consider Hooks; they cannot only focus on prices; they must also examine rules; they cannot just focus on narratives; they must also look at safety boundaries.

Hook has turned the pool itself into a programmable financial interface. The next round of DeFi competition will not only be about who has more liquidity but also about who can make this layer of interface stable, transparent, auditable, and distributable. To be honest, "distributable" is currently the most ambiguous aspect; most Hook projects have yet to figure out how to truly deliver this interface to ordinary users.