SEC Eyes Pump And Dump Activity And Rug Pull Token On Decentralized Exchange (DEX), First Uniswap Affected

The SEC begins an investigation of Uniswap. (SafePal)

JAKARTA – One of the decentralized financial service providers (DeFi), Uniswap is under supervision from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The US regulator accused Uniswap of selling unregistered securities. In addition, Uniswap is also considered not to disclose risks to its consumers.

Launching CryptoPotato, Uniswap user Nessa Risley from North Carolina invested around US$10,400 in low-cap digital tokens such as EthereumMax, Matrix Samurai, and Rocket Bunny between May and July last year. The trader has suffered a “huge loss” and is thus seeking justice through legal action.

On April 4, Risley filed a lawsuit, alleging Uniswap had failed to conduct identity checks and imposed securities restrictions on “fraudsters” who used the platform to create a number of scam tokens due to rampant fraud.

Two US law firms have filed a lawsuit against Uniswap, suing the decentralized exchange and its backers, including well-known VC firms such as A16z and Paradigm, for “violating securities laws by offering and selling securities in the form of digital tokens.”

The lawsuit filed by Kim & Serritella LLP and Barton LLP aims to invite victims like Risley, who has been losing money since last April on Uniswap, to join a class action against the platform's founders and developers. He claimed that Uniswap had failed to disclose a “registration statement,” including information about the investment risks associated with the securities they trade.

The demands for DeFi services do not stop, Uniswap Labs is also considered to have allowed unlawful activities such as pump and dump and rug pull to occur on the Uniswap platform itself.

This is one of the lawsuits against the decentralized exchange platform (DEX) which is accused of encouraging fraud by paying liquidity providers part of the fee for each trade.

Uniswap charges developers a fee, with the effort of keeping a portion of that fee for itself. The conflict of interest involved has the potential to place Uniswap as a facilitator of clandestine fraud.

Previously, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conducted an investigation into Uniswap Labs. The US regulator is still observing how customers use the decentralized exchange, what the market is like, and how it operates in general. In this regard, SEC chairman Gary Gensler expressed his suspicions over the DeFi protocol which is classified as a type of entity that the SEC should oversee.