Hayden Adams #49

Founder of Uniswap

Hayden Adams & Founder of Uniswap & background` Hayden Adams & Founder of Uniswap & poster`
Hayden Adams & Founder of Uniswap
Category Exchange
person-quote
Ethereum is actually pretty cool.

Biography:

Hayden Adams is a computer engineer from New York who founded the decentralized exchange Uniswap. After graduating college, Adams was an engineer at Siemens before getting laid off after a year. In 2017, he discovered crypto via a Reddit post made by none other than Vitalik Buterin.

Adams lived with his parents and learned to code. A friend, Karl Floersch, worked at Ethereum and reassured Adams that smart contract development is a viable career path. Adams then got involved with automated market makers and built Uniswap. Floersch introduced him to Buterin shortly after, who suggested Adams apply for an Ethereum Foundation grant. Adams did so, and the Uniswap project received a $65,000 dollar grant from the foundation, which went toward a full audit of its code.

Adams’ 2021:

In December, publications revealed that decentralized exchanges managed over $1 trillion in combined volume. On Ethereum specifically, DEXs had transacted more than $21 billion, and Uniswap had processed 75% of all layer-1 Ethereum DEX trading. Uniswap also had the highest 24-hour volume at the time of measuring, at $1.45 billion.

These statistics came during the year Uniswap launched its v3 upgrade. Some of the features introduced include concentrated liquidity and additional fee tiers. Concentrated liquidity ensures liquidity providers have more control over which price ranges their liquidity is offered. At the same time, the additional fee tiers enable providers to earn more for taking on various levels of risk. Upgraded oracles and cheapened transaction gas fees were also introduced thanks to a launch on Ethereum’s Optimism layer-2 solution in July.

After an overwhelmingly favorable community vote, December also saw Uniswap v3 contracts deployed to Polygon. As Polygon runs on a proof-of-stake consensus method, the deployment ensures users enjoy benefits such as lower fees.

In terms of governance, the project removed gas fees for voting on proposals by moving votes off-chain via its Uni.Vote innovation, encouraging community involvement.

Uniswap’s grants program funded around 75 projects throughout the year as well, supporting a range of ideas from governance tools to additional community grant programs. The team also focused on various minor UI upgrades to enhance the user experience — especially when dealing with liquidity management.

Through all of its innovations, Adams notes that Uniswap was one of the year’s dominant DEX protocols and that Uniswap v3 provided a 1000-fold increase in the DeFi sector’s capital efficiency.

Finally, the Uniswap community assisted in developing DeFi education programs. The community’s prime dedication was the DeFi Education Fund, which educates policymakers worldwide on the ins and outs of DeFi to help achieve regulatory clarity.

Adams’ 2022:

While Uniswap enjoyed a positive 2021, Adams is expected to have an even better 2022. According to the founder himself, Uniswap will reach $1 trillion in cumulative volume this year via its million-plus user base. As for the Uniswap development team, Uniswap Labs, Adams claims efforts will go toward new developer tools and widgets to increase governance participation. They will also focus on building “more paths to cheap, secure, seamless trading and coordination.”

Considering the project’s 2021, one can expect that Adams will bring Uniswap to additional networks and introduce new ways to manage liquidity within the platform. Uniswap’s Polygon deployment quickly became the network’s highest-volume DEX protocol as of early January.