Recently, the DeFi community has been engaged in an interesting discussion about the profitability models of DEXs. Hayden Adams, the founder of Uniswap, publicly pointed out that some DEX platforms are misleading when promoting revenue data — claiming that their income is five times that of Uniswap, but the underlying logic is worth scrutinizing.

What is the key difference? Some new types of DEXs adopt a more aggressive strategy: directly charging liquidity providers all trading fees, then returning this money through token incentives or liquidity mining. It sounds good, but what is the result of doing this? The "revenue" figures on the books look very impressive, with comparisons of five or ten times appearing.

Hayden Adams pointed out that if Uniswap also adopted this model — charging 100% of LP fees and then returning them with tokens — the reported fee income could easily reach the billion-dollar level. But doing so would lose its meaning.

Uniswap’s design logic is completely different. The protocol only takes a portion of the trading fees for its own operation and development, while most of the fees go directly to liquidity providers. Although this mode makes the on-paper data less "sexy," what is the payoff? A real, sustainable economic model. No artificial bubbles, no illusions created by token incentives, but a solid ecosystem supported by genuine trading activity.

Two different paths: one pursuing short-term impressive data, the other building a long-term healthy ecosystem. Behind this debate, it actually reflects the different understandings of "real value" within the entire DeFi industry.