Over 90,000 Unique Hooks Initialized in Uniswap v4, Expanding Development Experiments

In Uniswap (UNI) v4, the number of unique hook addresses initialized and connected to deployment pools has surpassed 90,000. This indicates that rather than just a simple increase in pools, customized DeFi features such as automated fees, liquidity management, and access restrictions are being widely experimented with on Uniswap v4.

CryptoBriefing reported that the number of hooks initialized and connected in Uniswap v4 has increased from approximately 22,600 at the beginning of this year to over 90,000. This figure is based on unique hook addresses connected to at least one deployment pool, not the number of active pools.

Hooks are a core feature of Uniswap v4. The Uniswap developer documentation describes hooks as external smart contracts that attach to individual liquidity pools. They allow for the insertion of separate logic at key execution points of the pool, such as before and after swaps, adding or removing liquidity, pool initialization, and donation flows.

One hook can be attached to one pool, and one hook can be used across multiple pools. Therefore, interpreting the number of 90,000 directly in terms of trading volume, deposits, or user count is not straightforward. To see the actual scale of economic activity, one must separately check the trading volume, liquidity, and routing status of the pools connected to each hook.

Uniswap v4 was officially launched on January 31, 2025. Uniswap Labs announced on its official blog at that time that v4 would operate on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism mainnet, Base, Binance Coin (BNB) Chain, Blast, WorldChain, Avalanche, and Zora Network.

It was also noted that over 150 hooks had already been developed at the time of launch. This count of 90,000 shows that the initial development flow right after the launch did not remain a one-off experiment but has accumulated.

Due to its technical structure, hooks add customized rules on top of existing protocols instead of creating new exchanges. Until now, automated market maker (AMM) experiments often branched off into separate protocols or forks, but v4 allows for different functionalities to be designed for each pool on the same foundation.

According to the developer documentation, hooks are designated at the pool creation stage. When creating a pool through PoolManager.initialize, the hook contract is defined alongside it, and there is no structure for later attaching or replacing hooks on existing pools. Hook permissions are encoded in the contract address, and the implementation functions and address flags must match.

The use of hooks is also expanding from experimental features to operational functionalities. Uniswap Labs announced on its official blog on July 23, 2026, the introduction of permissioned pools, stating that hooks would enforce access conditions necessary for trading regulated assets on-chain.

The DualPool hook, released by Uniswap Labs on July 22, 2026, was introduced as a structure that places unused funds in a yield-generating vault and brings them back to the pool at the time of trading. Previously, this publication reported that the founder of Uniswap had expanded the discussion surrounding the role of AMMs in the tokenized securities market to issues of trading pair design and liquidity costs.

Discussions within the developer community are also shifting towards addressing hooks as real operational issues. The Uniswap governance forum has seen discussions on privacy execution using hooks posted at the end of August 2026, and in June 2026, an RFC addressing the total locked value (TVL) of hooks and the standardization of effective liquidity was published.

However, regardless of the speed of dissemination, safety measures remain a challenge. According to Uniswap Labs' support documentation as of September 4, 2026, most hooks are targets for automatic routing, but hooks that start with the address 0x91 or use beforeSwapReturnsDelta, afterSwapReturnsDelta, or dynamicFees require separate allowlist review. The allowlist indicates that the routing algorithm may consider that pool, rather than being a security review or recommendation.

Uniswap's public hooklist repository organizes the deployed hooks by chain. It collects identifying information such as address, chain, chain ID, and hook flags, indicating that the hook ecosystem has entered a stage where it is organized into a searchable and classifiable list beyond individual experiments.

An important point for domestic investors is that Uniswap v4 is not merely an upgrade of the exchange version. Hooks are devices that change the trading rules and liquidity management methods of decentralized exchanges (DEX) at the pool level. However, the currently confirmed figure of 90,000 only shows the breadth of adoption and does not imply the safety or profitability of individual hooks.

Uniswap v4 hooks are intertwined with various discussions such as tokenized assets, privacy swaps, and liquidity automation. This publication previously reported on the Uniswap governance discussing a private swap option to reduce information exposure before trading. Following this count, the next verification metric will be how much hooks are actually used in trading paths and liquidity provision.

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