Uniswap Labs Fights SEC Enforcement Action in Court

Uniswap Labs Fights SEC Enforcement Action in Court

Uniswap Labs, the company behind the popular decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, has filed a motion with the court to pause the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) enforcement action against the company. The SEC issued a Wells notice to Uniswap in April, a precursor to the agency filing a lawsuit. Uniswap Labs argues that the SEC does not have jurisdiction over Uniswap because the exchange does not meet the definition of an exchange under the current law. Uniswap Labs CLO Martin Köppelmann said, "For the SEC to have jurisdiction over Uniswap, it must redefine what an exchange is. Under the current definition, Uniswap would need to have been designed to facilitate securities transactions. But the vast majority of volume on Uniswap is in non-securities: ether, bitcoin and stablecoins. The current definition of ‘exchange’ simply does not apply to the Uniswap Labs products." Uniswap founder Hayden Adams also spoke out against the SEC's action, saying via Twitter, "Tokens are file formats like PDFs, and the Uniswap protocol is a general purpose internet protocol, like TCP/IP, that anyone can build on or integrate with. The SEC’s harebrained approach will fail to protect consumers, harm U.S. competitiveness, and we intend to fight for Uniswap and DeFi in court. And we intend to win.”