here's the flywheel... and please please do not listen to people who have never built a dex or just read management books and use complicated words to sound smart. 1. more vol -> dex looks great to people who think more volume is better 2. the liquidity is propped up / incentivised -> there is no logical reason that liquidity should exist in specific pairs. 3. specific pairs -> wbtc/usdc, weth/usdc, usdt/usdc etc. note that: 1. fee tier can go to zero and uniswap labs will still make money through frontend fees 2. middleware 'entities' like flashbots etc. can still earn through network fees there is no such thing as zero fee: you're paying one way or another. the only difference here is that if you set LP fees to zero, that's more value that middleware can extract instead of liquidity providers. uniswap is considered the 'darling of defi' but anyone who understands defi knows that this is far from the truth. the rest ... are paid KOLs or read too much management books. does uniswap have amazing researchers? also yes btw. lots of inspiration from their work. but researchers in uniswap != what uniswap labs leadership decides to do.