On April 11, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned Uniswap that it planned to take enforcement action against the company. The warning came in the form of a "Wells Notice," which the SEC sends to a company before initiating formal litigation, giving the company a last chance to refute any allegations. The specific nature of the SEC's allegations against Uniswap Labs is not yet known.
In response, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams confirmed on social media that Uniswap Labs had received a warning from the SEC and issued an open letter stating that it would fight back. The following is a compilation and compilation of the contents of the open letter by BlockBeats:
“I was not surprised by the SEC’s Wells Notice, but I was angry and prepared to fight back.
"I believe the products we offer are legal and our job is to be on the right side of history. But it has been clear for some time that rather than working on clear, informed rulemaking, the SEC has decided to focus on attacking long-time good players in crypto like Uniswap and Coinbase while letting bad actors like FTX slide."
When I first started building Uniswap, the goal was not to reimagine finance.
This is an experiment in a completely decentralized, fully automated on-chain market. I have no idea if it works, or if anyone will use it.
Fast forward to today, the Uniswap protocol has processed over $2 trillion in transaction volume. Thousands of teams and developers have forked our code or built on top of it. We have built a new financial infrastructure that is transparent, fair, secure, and easy to use, powering the entire industry.
All of this is done by the Uniswap Labs team in their offices in New York City, USA.
People often ask me why I stayed in the US, and my answer is simple: I believe blockchain is an incredibly powerful technology. Just like the internet, it’s here to stay. So someone needs to solve this problem, and it better be us.
When you develop technology that improves people's lives, you don't need to hide.
The SEC’s self-described mission is to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation,” which is a noble mission, but I think Uniswap is doing a much better job of that today than the SEC is.
I am frustrated that the SEC seems more concerned with protecting an opaque system than protecting consumers. We must fight the U.S. authorities to protect our companies and our industry.
This fight will take years, and will likely go all the way to the Supreme Court, with the future of fintech and our industry hanging in the balance. If we unite, we can win.
I think freedom is worth fighting for. I think DeFi is worth fighting for.”
