SEC sends Wells notice to Uniswap

The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued a warning to the Uniswap decentralized exchange in the form of a Wells notice. Wells notices are used to inform the recipient of an impending lawsuit, and give them a last-ditch opportunity to convince the SEC that the suit is unwarranted.

The notice was received with an adversarial posture by Uniswap, who announced its receipt with a blog post titled "Fighting for DeFi". "Taking into account the SEC's ongoing lawsuits against Coinbase and others as well as their complete unwillingness to provide clarity or a path to registration to those operating lawfully within the U.S., we can only conclude that this is the latest political effort to target even the best actors building technology on blockchains," they wrote.

The news was met with outrage in the crypto community, who generally saw the action as indicative of an overly aggressive posture by the SEC to crack down on defi and crypto more broadly.