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On April 11th, according to Fortune, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a warning to Uniswap Labs, planning to take enforcement action against the company. Reportedly, this warning was issued in the form of a "Wells Notice," where the SEC sends such notice to a company before initiating formal litigation, providing the company with a final opportunity to rebut any charges. Currently, it is unclear about the specific nature of the charges SEC is alleging against Uniswap Labs.
The market reacted very sensitively to this news. Market data indicates that due to the "SEC warning" news, the price of UNI dropped from $14 to the current $9.58, with a sharp decline of over 14% in 24 hours. During this period, the on-chain trading volume of UNI tokens surged, even ranking first on Dexscreener's Ethereum token hotlist.
Uniswap responded promptly. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams confirmed the receipt of the SEC warning by Uniswap Labs on social media and issued an open letter in response. In the letter, Hayden mentioned that the team believes their product offerings are legal and accused the SEC of not focusing on developing clear, informed rules, choosing instead to target high-quality participants in the crypto space like Uniswap and Coinbase, while letting "bad actors" like FTX slip through.
Additionally, Hayden emphasized in the letter Uniswap's long-standing commitment to compliance as a U.S.-based internet company. He also mentioned that this battle with the SEC would last for years, with preparations made to appeal to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Interestingly, despite the solidarity shown by the Uniswap team in the public letter, it seems that some internal capital does not share the same sentiment. On April 10th, the day before the SEC issued the warning, according to @ai_9684xtpa monitoring, wallets associated with Uniswap team/early investors sold 15,000 UNI tokens at an average price of $11.18, approximately $167,000. Although the amount is negligible, any details will be infinitely magnified by the market at a critical moment when the team encounters a major crisis.
In the past few months, Uniswap's momentum has been gradually picking up. Earlier on February 23rd, the Uniswap Foundation announced the release of the "Activate Uniswap Protocol Governance" proposal for Snapshot voting on March 1st, which would distribute any protocol fees proportionally to UNI token holders who stake and delegate their voting rights. Following this news, the price of UNI tokens surged overnight from $7 to a peak near $12.
Following that, on March 12th, Uniswap successfully launched non-custodial, zero-fee limit orders on its web-based app. On April 7th, Uniswap announced the launch of UniswapX on the web version, providing users with MEV protection, gas-free transactions, and cost-free transactions even in the event of transaction failures. Everything seemed to be moving towards a future full of promise, and no one would have expected that the SEC would choose Uniswap as its next target after facing off with giants like BlackRock and Coinbase.
Since the Tornado Cash incident, the Uniswap team has been very concerned about its compliance issues. As reported by BlockBeats previously, Uniswap has taken a completely compliant approach to team operations: an all-American executive team, recruitment and welfare policies that fully comply with U.S. laws, and a legal route that separates open source protocols from development entities.
After SEC labeled HEX as an unregistered security in its lawsuit against Richard Schueler and his project Hex in August 2023, Uniswap immediately removed its token HEX from the Uniswap trading interface. It was even jokingly referred to by netizens as a "centralized decentralized finance protocol".
In fact, for a long time, Uniswap has been well protected in terms of legal risks due to this compliance route, and it can be said that the U.S. courts have been "biased" towards Uniswap. In a collective lawsuit in April 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York also dismissed charges against Uniswap. In that case, court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York showed that Uniswap had the ability to operate legally in many cases, and there was no transaction between the plaintiffs and the Uniswap platform and protocol. Currently, securities laws do not seem to cover the responsibility of DeFi protocols themselves for fraudulent behavior in their use.
The judge believed that the plaintiffs were harmed by fraudulent token issuers who used Uniswap's core contracts and relayers for a "grab", and Uniswap was only playing the role of building the platform. At least under U.S. securities laws, this did not mean that Uniswap was responsible for fraud and the resulting damages. Hayden, the founder of Uniswap, called this judgment a "huge victory for Uniswap and crypto compliance".
In contrast to the outcome of the
Tornado Cash protocol being blacklisted and the development team being arrested, Uniswap has indeed been a "lucky one" in crypto regulation. In 2024, a year when the crypto industry is showing strong upward trends, Gary Gansler's choice to once again confront industry giants poses significant challenges. Although the SEC warning came very suddenly, it is foreseeable that Uniswap also has a high probability of not being at a disadvantage in this future confrontation. |
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Post time 19-4-2024 13:47:17