There is no standard for NFT media, which range from still images to animations, audio files, video files and even complex HTML. Even if an application supports most media types, it must constantly monitor for edge cases that might require specialized handling. On top of that, NFT media can change after reveals — and failing to account for this results in poor experiences for end users.
Uniswap plays in a very competitive market. It cannot afford to load NFT media slowly, fail to support certain media types, or serve outdated media. However, supporting all of this in-house would require significant overhead and engineering resources — a daunting challenge for a protocol with many other competing priorities.
Center provides an easy-to-use renderer that solves Uniswap’s problem. Uniswap can simply ping the Center API with the address and token ID, and we take care of the rest — providing instant access to the NFT’s media. Center provides support for all of the tricky problems that Uniswap would otherwise have to solve in-house: