If you're in a group where $SATO, $uPEG, and Slonks haven't been discussed yet, you might need to switch groups.

When Slonks launched, its Mint price was under 0.004 ETH (~70 CNY), and within six days, its floor price surged to 0.123 ETH—a 60x increase. uPEG priced at $982, reached a market cap of $34.44 million in just two weeks from zero. When SATO’s market cap dipped below $3 million, early participants directly bottom-fished via the on-chain bonding curve, opening positions of 260,000 SATO. The project later soared to a $40 million market cap, generating quick profits of $360,000.

These aren’t ordinary memecoin wealth narratives. They collectively point to one emerging sector: Uniswap V4 Hook. In just two and a half weeks, these three projects catapulted the entire V4 hook ecosystem from a niche DeFi geek toy into mainstream attention. Related reading: "Bull Market Trades New Tokens — Will the 'Hook' Concept Unlock the Next Bull Run?"

For retail investors who missed early entry into $SATO, $uPEG, and Slonks, how can we seize the next potential wealth opportunity? Before diving into that, let’s briefly recap how the V4 Hook narrative took off.

In the pre-V3 era, Uniswap was merely a currency exchange counter. Swap ETH for USDC, price follows x*y=k, done. With V4, the hook was embedded into the swap lifecycle—anyone can inject their own code before, after, or at the exact moment of liquidity provision.

Uniswap v4 actually launched as early as January 30 last year. But it wasn’t until the emergence of projects like $SATO, $uPEG, and Slonks that hooks gained widespread discussion among retail traders.

SATO was the first to emerge—launched around mid-April, about a week ahead of uPEG. It didn’t go viral through KOLs or get endorsement from high-profile figures like Adam Hollander. Its spread was more aligned with degeneracy circles: keywords like “pure on-chain,” “fair launch,” “no team allocation,” and “contract runs itself” directly attracted V4 enthusiasts and bonding curve veterans.

The true breakout moment came with Unipeg (UPEG). The name carries strong symbolic weight tied to Uniswap’s origin story, making it inherently narrative-rich and attention-grabbing.

In 2019, Hayden Adams published a blog titled “Uniswap Birthday Blog—V0,” recalling that he originally wanted to name the protocol “Unipeg”—a fusion of unicorn and Pegasus. But Vitalik glanced at it and said, “Unipeg? Sounds more like Uniswap.” So Hayden settled on “Uniswap” instead.

“Uniswap” replaced “Unipeg,” becoming the name of a $70 billion DeFi blue-chip.

Eight years later, in April 2026, an anonymous developer (@unipegv4 on Twitter, speculated to be linked to 0xHadrian’s blog) resurrected the discarded name and redefined it: Uni + JPEG = uPEG. Within the NFT community, images have long been jokingly referred to as “JPEGs.” Since this token originated in a Uniswap pool, it became Uniswap’s JPEG.

This story alone is viral-grade material—it closes four distinct narratives in one name: Hayden’s personal anecdote, Vitalik’s casual remark, NFT jargon, and the new V4 mechanism.

The uPEG narrative is easy to explain and even easier to propagate. This attracted Adam Hollander, CMO of OpenSea, who on April 25 tweeted: “I’m interested in this concept—going to buy some to test.”

That night, uPEG surged 3x. Then Uniswap’s niko followed up, Ouroboros co-founder Nafay, and meme coin KOL pow all posted their uPEG holdings on X. In two weeks, uPEG rocketed from zero to a $34.44 million market cap, with a price of $982. Related reading: "Market Cap Breaks $23M Again, What Magic Does New Image Dog Unipeg Hold?"

Following uPEG, Slonks launched on May 1.

Developer Hirsch did something seemingly incongruous: he embedded a 214KB AI image generation model (roughly the size of a low-resolution mobile wallpaper) directly into an Ethereum smart contract. The model’s task was to render 10,000 CryptoPunks.

But a 214KB model cannot store 10,000 faces. At 576 pixels per image, the model averaged about 24 errors per image—around a 4% distortion rate. Only 32 out of 10,000 were perfectly replicated; the rest were all “distorted punks.”

Hirsch called these distorted pixels “slop.” He then posted on X: “The slop is not a bug. It is the medium.” (The imperfection isn’t a flaw—it’s the medium.)

The entire economic model is built on the principle: “The more wrong, the more valuable.” Two same-tier Slonks can merge—burn one to upgrade the other. The new image’s slop level only increases, never decreases. Any Slonk can be sent to the void, minting future $SLOP tokens (not yet live) at a 1:1 ratio based on slop count. Every action is executed via V4 hook, fully verifiable on-chain.

Slonks didn’t explode immediately. For several days after launch, it was overshadowed by uPEG’s $30 million market cap peak. Its floor hovered near 0.005 ETH, and OpenSea saw little discussion—until veteran NFT figure 798 began posting on X, turning “wrong is art” into a shareable meme. Simultaneously, on-chain smart money capitalized, KOLs and media amplified coverage, and OpenSea’s homepage trending list boosted visibility. Within five days, Slonks surged 60x.

However, SATO’s significance lies in proving at the base layer that “V4 hook can enable novel economic models”—the prerequisite for uPEG and Slonks to emerge.

uPEG’s value was translating the V4 hook concept from DeFi into NFT vernacular. Retailers suddenly realized: hooks aren’t just toys for DeFi geeks—they can produce things people actually want to buy.

Slonks, building on the attention dividend created by uPEG, crafted an even stronger narrative hook and introduced a compelling economic model, further accelerating the V4 Hook narrative.

For Western V4 Hook core circle, the BlockBeats editor recommends following these accounts:

1. Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams), founder of Uniswap—no further explanation needed.

2. saucepoint (@saucepoint), hook god of the Uniswap Foundation, author of v4-template—the starting code for nearly every hook project comes from his template.

3. Uniswap official (@Uniswap) and Uniswap Foundation (@UniswapFND)—their weekly Builder Updates (published Wed/Thu) are the most important official signals in this space.

4. niko (@niko_eth), member of Uniswap Labs team—the first wave of KOL momentum for uPEG largely stemmed from him.

5. horsefacts (@horsefacts_eth), one of the earliest builders of V4 hooks—technical trendsetter.

6. Adam Hollander (@AdamHollander), CMO of OpenSea, deeper background includes being an early ecosystem driver for Hashmasks and Pudgy Penguins—he’s the key messenger bridging DeFi into the NFT world.

7. Project accounts: uPEG official (@unipegv4), Unimon official (@unimonapp), Slonks official, SATO official (@Satothedog). Tracking who they follow and interact with often reveals the next unannounced hook project.

Beyond these, here are essential V4 hook and Uniswap-related resources to monitor:

1. HookRank.io: currently the cleanest V4 hook explorer—with over 1,300 hooks listed, ranked by TVL/Volume/Fees, featuring “New” and “Trending” tags. This is where you’ll spot hooks gaining traction before Twitter picks them up.

2. HookAtlas.com: a directory of hook projects with project descriptions—ideal for mapping.

3. Uniswap Foundation Builder Update: published regularly on the blog, updated weekly by the foundation—core Uniswap ecosystem followers won’t miss this pulse of hot narratives.

4. Unichain Infinite Hackathon: prize-winning projects are almost always seed-stage. Monitoring this competition reveals core projects on Unichain.

5. Dune Uniswap V4 Tracker: track total hook count, TVL distribution, and chain volume breakdown.

6. Dexscreener: no need to elaborate—standard tool for tracking crypto price charts. Use it to monitor newly created V4 pairs, serving as an early signal for projects without KOL hype. For example, uPEG’s holder count jumped from 200 to over 4,000 in 24 hours—a steep slope in itself is a signal.

7. OpenSea + Magic Eden Trending lists: Slonks appeared on OpenSea Trending the day after launch—ordinary NFT projects take weeks of marketing to reach that. On May 8, Slonks recorded 575 ETH in daily trading volume, surpassing CryptoPunks’ 129 ETH. Any new project exceeding CryptoPunks’ daily volume during the same period is a macro-level signal.

8. awesome-uniswap-hooks GitHub repo: all hook experiments are cataloged here—perfect for discovering early-stage projects with intriguing designs but no token yet.

Based on our editor’s speculative, non-responsible hunch—if the V4 Hook narrative doesn’t fizzle out immediately—next waves will likely unfold along three trajectories: short-term SATO bug-fix plays, mid-term hook composability, and long-term Unichain as the central hub of the ecosystem.

First, the short-term SATO bug fix play is already visible across various chat groups.

The root cause behind sat1, the so-called “fix fork,” lies in SATO’s hook contract. To override Uniswap’s standard pricing, any V4 hook must maintain its own ledger of “how much liquidity is in the pool,” using that number to calculate its pricing curve. But Uniswap PoolManager also maintains a real-time version. Having two ledgers simultaneously requires synchronization after each swap. If the sync logic is poorly implemented, the two values drift apart—a known issue in hook engineering called dual-state drift.

Drift creates arbitrage opportunities. At a given moment, the hook may believe 1 SATO should be worth X ETH, while the actual pool reserves show Y ETH. Whoever spots the discrepancy first can exploit it. The two addresses that made $360,000 in floating profit weren’t betting on sentiment—they exploited a contractual accounting flaw.

sat1 brands itself as “one curve, single state,” relying on a single ledger with no drift. While technically sound, the narrative is strategically misleading—it tells retail: “SATO has a bug; I’m the correct version,” aiming to claim legitimacy.

This strategy isn’t new to V4. Bitcoin ecosystem had ORDI, SATS, 1000SATS; ERC-404 era brought Pandora, DN404, ERC-404 V2; pump.fun era spawned BankrFun, ClankerFun—each successor claims to have fixed the previous one’s flaws.

Bugfix forks aren’t about technical fixes—they’re about narrative appropriation. They don’t need to actually fix anything; they just need to make “original version has bugs” a consensus on Twitter. Once that happens, liquidity flows from the original to the fork.

V4 hooks have lowered the cost of this playbook to unprecedented levels. Hooks are open-source; forking and deploying a modified version requires changing just a few lines of code. Every successful hook project comes with a built-in fork generator. SATO/sat1 was the first pair—others like uPEG2, Slinks will inevitably follow.

Mid-term, we can anticipate hook composability.

Currently, one V4 pool can host only one hook. But developers are already working on “meta-hooks”—hooks that internally call multiple sub-hooks to enable composite behaviors.

Once this works, uPEG’s image generation + Slonks’ NFT-token swap + SATO’s bonding curve could coexist in a single pool. One swap triggers image generation, updates pricing curves, and mints NFTs—all in one transaction.

Potential directions are endless: swap-triggered music/audio generation (swap SVG for MIDI—audio spreads faster than images); swap as identity or reputation system (each swap updates soul-bound scores); prediction market hook (treat swap as bet, run Polymarket-style mechanics within LP); time-based hook (longer holding reduces sell tax); cross-collection fusion (use hook to merge Pudgy Penguin and Azuki into new forms—most feasible between CC0 projects).

BlockBeats editor believes composability is the true ceiling of this space—single-point mechanisms are just demos.

Looking long-term, Unichain may become the next hot chain.

Not because of superior tech, but due to funding, traffic, and whitelist advantages from the Uniswap Foundation. Hook projects on Unichain have a significantly higher chance of being featured in the official Builder Update compared to Ethereum mainnet.

To catch earliest signals, BlockBeats editor also recommends setting up dedicated monitoring for Unichain: use Dune’s Unichain dashboard to track hook deployments, L2Beat for TVL and active addresses, and the official builder toolkit for new tool releases.

Original: BlockBeats