Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has dusted off a story from the protocol’s early years. He says Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) once paid seven figures for the Uniswap.com domain, then pointed it at a fork.
Adams volunteered the account on X under a post about a16z.vc. Someone parked that address with an open offer to sell it to Andreessen Horowitz, the venture firm known as a16z.
How SBF Ended Up Owning the Uniswap.com Domain
The original owners wanted seven figures, meaning at least $1 million. Uniswap walked away from that price. Bankman-Fried paid it anyway, Adams says.
He then aimed the domain at a fork, a copycat exchange running on Uniswap’s open-source code. Adams did not name the fork. He also stopped short of claiming to know the motive, and said he could only guess at it.
The timing stays open as well. Bankman-Fried took control of SushiSwap, the best known Uniswap fork, in September 2020 after its anonymous founder handed over the keys. Adams did not say whether the domain fits that period.
The stakes went beyond ego, though. Uniswap runs its app on a .org address, so some traders type the .com version first. Whoever controls that address decides where those visitors land.
However, the redirect handed Uniswap an opening. Adams says his lawyers called it malicious use of the domain, and that argument alone recovered the address for nothing. Uniswap.com now points to the protocol’s official site.
Adams did not say whether Bankman-Fried got anything back. He also did not describe the process his lawyers used.
Where the Buyer Stands Now
Bankman-Fried faces steeper problems today. A jury convicted the FTX founder of fraud in November 2023, and a judge ordered 25 years in prison plus an $11 billion forfeiture. A petition to the Supreme Court is his last open door.
Uniswap, meanwhile, kept shipping. Governance switched on protocol fees in December and started burning UNI, the protocol’s governance token. More than 100 million UNI had reached the burn address by February.
UNI trades near $8.78, roughly double its level a month earlier. Most of that gain arrived in one sharp leg higher after the middle of September. Whale wallets had already bought at the fastest pace in five years during August, and Bitwise has separately filed for a spot Uniswap ETF.
Therefore the domain story reads as a footnote. Still, it shows what the fork rivalry looked like away from the charts. Money bought the address, and lawyers took it back.
