Law & Policy

The largest onchain marketplace. Buy and sell crypto on Ethereum and 11+ other chains.

The 2nd Circuit issued an opinion on the lawsuit against @uniswap & Uniswap Foundation (and some investors)

some 🔥 analysis in here

DEX swaps "are more analogous to overarching user agreements than to securities transactions conducted by traditional broker dealers"

there's more 👇

general counsel @ 1kx // co-founder @ thing3 // summoner @ hydra ventures

And another one:

"As the district court noted, extending such liability to that role would be akin to holding the NASDAQ or [NYSE] liable as facilitators of any fraudulent stock purchase on their exchanges"

tl;dr - devs aren't liable for the misuse of their tech by others

Federal claims under Securities/Exchange Acts FAILED

🔥 No "statutory seller" status
🔥 Smart contracts ≠ illegal agreements
🔥 Social media promo ≠ securities solicitation

State law claims get remanded - battle continues in lower court. 

Partial but big win for plaintiffs

This reinforces critical protections for decentralized protocols. 

As the Court noted: "The token issuers and liquidity providers make each token available - not the platform."
 
Watershed moment for crypto accountability standards.

I barely want to provide any commentary on this bc the Court just nails it over & over

"It defies logic that a drafter of a smart contract, a computer code, could be held liable under the Exchange Act for a third party user’s misuse of the platform."

Based! Especially the part where tech providers are not considered to be broker-dealers