The world's leading decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has announced the delisting of a series of tokens from its app interface. Uniswap Labs made the announcement on July 23, noting that the tokens had only been removed from the app interface and that the protocol remains immutable:
“These changes concern the interface on app.uniswap.org: the protocol remains completely autonomous, immutable and without authorization”.
Why was this decision made?
The Uniswap Labs company is the software developer who created the front-end web app portal. The front end is separate from the Uniswap protocol itself, which is a standalone code released as a public good.
In the blog post, Uniswap Labs suggested that increased regulatory pressure may have influenced its decision, stating: "We monitor the evolution of the regulatory landscape." The company also described the move as "consistent with actions taken by other DeFi interfaces."
Tokens that have been removed from the platform interface listing include instruments that may be at risk of being classified as securities by a regulator, including tokenized securities, option tokens, insurance tokens and synthetic assets from crypto derivative platforms like Synthetix.
The Gold-backed token, Tether Gold (quotation XAUT), is among the targeted assets, however, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams attributed the removal of XAUT to faulty code. Meme-themed tokens including Grumpy Cat (GRUMPY) were also blacklisted by Uniswap.
Is Uniswap really decentralized?
The reaction from the crypto community has questioned Uniswap's alleged decentralization. Industry observers such as "ChainLinkGod" asked why UNI holders could not vote on the delistings, tweeting:
“Not very informative here. Was this decision made through the governance vote? If not, this opens a whole jar of worms and sets a terrible precedent. "
Uniswap is currently the leading decentralized exchange by trading volume, with the v2 and v3 versions of the protocol facilitating a combined trading value of $ 1,45 billion in the past 24 hours.
Regulatory pressure on the cryptocurrency industry is mounting around the world, with Binance and BlockFi recently taking the ire of authorities in the UK and US respectively.
As reported on July 22, the Texas State Securities Board has joined its counterparts in New Jersey and Alabama in taking action against the crypto lending platform. Vermont became the fourth state to issue an order against BlockFi on July 25.
And what do you think of this? Does this seem like a good reason to switch platforms? Let us know in the comments section below.
