Uniswap Founder Blasts Citadel: ’Stop Forcing Wall Street Rules on DeFi’

The clash between old finance and new is heating up—and the founder of the world's largest decentralized exchange isn't holding back.

Hayden Adams, creator of Uniswap, just launched a public broadside against Wall Street giant Citadel Securities. His target? The firm's push to impose traditional market regulations on the permissionless world of decentralized finance.

DeFi vs. The Establishment

Adams argues that Citadel's lobbying efforts represent a fundamental misunderstanding of DeFi's core value proposition. Decentralized protocols aren't just faster, cheaper versions of Wall Street—they're a complete architectural overhaul. They replace gatekeepers with code, middlemen with smart contracts, and opaque rulebooks with transparent, on-chain logic.

Forcing DeFi to wear the ill-fitting suit of legacy regulation, he suggests, would stifle the very innovation that makes it transformative. It's like asking the internet to comply with telegram-era laws.

A Battle for the Future of Finance

This isn't just a philosophical debate. It's a high-stakes fight over who gets to write the rulebook for the next generation of global markets. Wall Street's playbook, built on centralized control and rent-seeking intermediaries, faces an existential challenge from open-source protocols that let users trade, lend, and borrow directly with each other.

Citadel's move is classic incumbent behavior—when you can't beat the technology, try to regulate it into your own image. A cynical observer might note it's easier to change the rules than to adapt a multi-billion dollar business model built on spreads and information asymmetry.

The outcome will determine whether finance remains a walled garden tended by a few powerful institutions, or evolves into an open, composable, and user-owned ecosystem. Adams's message is clear: DeFi wasn't built to be ruled by Citadel. It was built to set it free.

Uniswap Founder Blasts Citadel Over DeFi

The Uniswap founder was not one to beat around the bush while blasting the arguments that the Citadel had raised regarding DeFi. The Uniswap founder expressed the following quote:
“Okay, that’s all pretty bad, but the actual nerve for one of their arguments to be that there is no way for DeFi protocols to provide ‘fair access’ to all things, lmao.”

He continued, “Makes sense the king of shady tradfi market makers doesn’t like open source, peer-to-peer tech that lowers barriers to liquidity creation.”

Uniswap Criticizes Citadel DeFi Regulation

This dispute arose as a result of an explanatory letter that the Citadel Securities company had written to the SEC, pointing out that most DeFi platforms qualify as traditional exchanges and broker-dealers because they LINK buyers and sellers in an organized manner. This means that such platforms are not exempt from regulations merely because they are based on blockchain code.

In this case, the Citadel defendants identified various players in the DeFi space, such as interfaces, developers, validators, and liquidity providers, and alleged that most of them are like the intermediaries that are regulatory compliant.

Citadel had worries that the tokenized version of U.S. stocks traded on DeFi markets could spark the development of a “shadow market” and undermine the protections afforded to investors. They were also against the exemption of open-source protocols as they could be considered intermediaries.

SEC Targets DeFi Protocol Developers

If the SEC were to adopt the recommendations put forth by Citadel, protocol development teams, frontline operators, routing wallets, and even DAO participants could find themselves required to strictly register and comply with regulations applicable to broker-dealers. This, many people believe, WOULD be impossible for software that is both decentralized and permissionless.

Adams put the situation into context as the continuation of the struggle between Wall Street and the world of DeFi. Through the hinting of the past incident involving ConstitutionDAO, Adams portrayed the firm as one that has always been an obstacle to crypto-driven initiatives and has brought that attitude to Washington.