SEC Ends Uniswap Investigation

The Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) has closed its investigation into Ethereum-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap and will take no further enforcement action against the platform, according to a Feb. 25 X post.

In April 2024, the SEC, under the leadership of former chair Gary Gensler, issued a Wells Notice claiming that Uniswap Labs, the company behind Uniswap, operated an unregistered securities exchange, engaged in unregistered clearing firm activity and issued an unregistered security.

Those charges have now been dropped under the agency’s new pro-crypto leadership.

Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams said in a Feb. 25 X post that the investigation took over three years and cost the company millions of dollars. Adams claims the agency went after Uniswap Labs with no apparent legal reason, only as part of a strategy to force decentralized finance (DeFi) into a regulatory framework that doesn’t fit.

“This is a huge win, not just for Uniswap Labs but for DeFi as a whole. It reaffirms what we’ve said all along: that decentralized technology and self-custody are inherently different from the centralized, intermediated systems they aim to replace,” Adams added.

Uniswap’s native token UNI is holding up better than most digital assets amid the ongoing crypto selloff, up around 2.5% in the last 24 hours, according to Coingecko.