Uniswap founder Hayden Adams issues response to class action lawsuit dismissal: "Based"

A U.S. federal judge has definitively dismissed a long‑running class action lawsuit that sought to hold Uniswap Labs and founder Hayden Adams liable for scam tokens traded via the Uniswap protocol, prompting Adams to publicly celebrate the ruling as “based.” The case, filed in the Southern District of New York and led by investors including Nessa Risley, alleged that Uniswap’s developers, its CEO, and associated venture capital backers should be treated as “sellers” or facilitators of unregistered securities and fraud because their decentralized exchange infrastructure enabled trading of tokens that later proved to be scams. Judge Katherine Polk Failla rejected those arguments, concluding that the creators of decentralized smart‑contract infrastructure are not liable under federal securities laws for the independent actions of third‑party token issuers and users, likening attempts to sue Uniswap’s developers to trying to hold Venmo or Zelle responsible for an illicit transaction conducted over their payment rails. The dismissal—described in industry commentary as a “final” defeat for the plaintiffs, who are barred from refiling these federal claims—has been framed as an important reference point for how U.S. courts may treat DeFi protocol developers in fraud‑related disputes. By drawing a line between open‑source code authors and the bad actors who deploy scam tokens on top of that code, the ruling is seen as clarifying that, at least under current law, responsibility for fraudulent token offerings lies primarily with the issuers rather than with the teams that build permissionless trading infrastructure. Adams responded on social media that the decision affirms a core principle for developers: if open‑source smart contracts are misused by scammers, legal accountability should fall on the scammers, not on the protocol’s creators—a message he encapsulated with the single‑word reaction “Based.”

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