Ian McGinley, the CFTC’s Director of Enforcement, emphasised the significance of compliance within the evolving digital asset and DeFi sectors: “DeFi operators have to be vigilant to make sure that transactions adjust to the regulation.”
Case Background
Uniswap Labs, a Delaware firm based mostly in New York, developed a blockchain-based digital asset protocol that enabled customers within the U.S. and overseas to commerce digital belongings on the Ethereum blockchain. This protocol allowed the creation and buying and selling of liquidity swimming pools consisting of matched pairs of digital belongings. The platform supplied leveraged tokens that supplied publicity to belongings akin to Ether and Bitcoin.
The CFTC discovered that these leveraged tokens certified as retail commodity transactions however didn’t meet the supply necessities inside 28 days, making them illegal for non-Eligible Contract Participants with out registration as a contract market. As Uniswap Labs was not registered, these actions had been discovered to be in violation of the CEA.
The CFTC acknowledged Uniswap Labs’ substantial cooperation with the investigation, leading to a diminished civil penalty. The enforcement crew answerable for this matter included Devin Cain, Okay. Brent Tomer, Lenel Hickson, Jr., and Manal M. Sultan.
$UNI, the native token of the platform, is up 3% within the final 24 hours.
