Fighting for DeFi
AI summary of the linked articleUniswap Labs said it received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saying the SEC plans to recommend legal action against it, and that it will keep its products available and keep shipping. The company argues the move is a political effort to target builders of blockchain technology and that the law does not support SEC jurisdiction over the Uniswap Protocol. It cites the SEC v. Ripple ruling on secondary market transactions and the Risley v. Uniswap Labs decision, which said securities law concerns are better addressed to Congress. It also states that the Uniswap Protocol has processed $2 trillion in transactions without a hack and uses 25% of Ethereum's blockspace. |
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7 comments  I agree with the sentiment on Twitter and so on. It is pretty strange that, among all the shady scam projects out there, the SEC seems to want to stress pressing the few relatively legit projects. If you had me rank crypto projects by legitimacy, Uniswap would have obviously scored really well and there would have been plenty scoring quite bad to really terrible.  I'm wondering what their real goal is here. Do they go after Uniswap because it's the biggest and most legit one, so if they "beat the champion" all other DEXs will have to follow through? On the other hand, it seems hard to build a sensible case against Uniswap, so they risk a big defeat. Or maybe it's somehow related to the "fee switch" proposal that Uniswap discussed a month ago? The article defends quite visibly against two or three accusations: - Generally speaking, not all tokens are securities - Uniswap isn‘t facilitating securities exchange (see first argument) and their argument is that a security is constructed as a claim on an legal incorporation, not just an ERC20 token. - Finally: UNI itself is not a security because it doesn‘t give holders a right to Uniswap Labs property. Yeah, I'm not sure where the wedge is for the SEC here. I wonder what would happen if they turned on the fee switch — wouldn't UNI be a security since it would give a right to cash flows? This was the argument I'd heard a few times explaining why Uniswap is so hesitant about sharing the revenue with the holders. Again, why even talk about the fee switch? It is not part of the defense in the blog post, so it is arguably not relevant.  Some SEC investigations start as inquiries into the org. If the investigator finds there to be enough evidence to pursue legal action that might results in the agency winning and collecting fines, the investigation proceeds. A lot of inquiries end up as nothing, but when the biggest FX market (Uniswap) is on the table, it's hard to wrap ones mind around how this action hasn't come sooner. The SEC is right though - there is a path to registration. It's just antiquated, laden with bullshit rules that don't apply to modern tech, and so costly to follow as to be prohibitive. What would Uniswap labs register for precisely if they pursued it? Commodities? Good to see them being willing to fight. |
