Hayden Adams on Uniswap's Announcement?! | State of the Nation

Welcome, Bankless Nation, to this edition of State of the Nation. Today I'm without my fearless partner, Ryan. He has gone on vacation. The AI is powered down. Yet, like all episodes on Bankless, we persist nonetheless. Today on the show, we're bringing on Hayden Adams. It's gonna be the second time he's ever been on Bankless, and the first time that we've ever done a live stream with him. And Uniswap just announced something. If you go search the interwebs, that announcement just came out. They announced something. Uh and it does indeed include the word airdrop, but no, it is not the Uni token. Uh so we're gonna go into all those details. It is no, here's a small hint, there's no coincidence that it's happening during the week of NFT NYC. Uh so uh we're gonna talk about everything that's going on over on the Uniswap lab side of things. And also I just want to pick his brain. As an OG DeFi founder that built something really, really cool in the 2019-2020 bear market that exploded in 2021. Uh, I want to pick his brain about how he's feeling in the in the world of crypto at this present moment and what he's thinking about. But of course, we're going to dive down the rabbit hole of what the hell is up with uh what's going on over there at Uniswap Labs and what they're up to over there because they're doing something cool. Uh it might might change, um, might surprise a few of the listeners who are tapping into this uh live stream right now. And thank you for all the listeners who are tapping into the live stream. Make sure to like and subscribe because that is how you get notified of all the alpha and watch all the cool stuff that's going on around the bankless nation and around the crypto universe. This, of course, is the state of the nation, comes at you every Tuesday where we cover the news and weekly events and news cycle events that go on in this crazy world that we call crypto. And before I ask myself what the state of the nation is, because Ryan's not here to ask it for me, we gotta talk about one of our friends and sponsors. Uh, guys, I gotta ask myself, what is the state of the nation? Because the state of the nation is we are back on the frontier. Uh Uniswap, uh, the beloved DeFi app, uh Uniswap Labs, going in a slightly different direction this week uh in the world of DeFi and getting into something perhaps a little bit unexpected. And you guys probably have hinted, gotten the hint that since it's going on during NFT, NYC, it might be something NFT-based. Uh, and so we are back on the frontier. We are in the bear market, we are in the build market, and people are expanding their products and expanding their horizons into new frontiers. Uh, and so, David, what is the state of the nation? The state of the nation is we are back on the frontier. So, guys, I'm gonna go get Hayden Adams. We're gonna bring him live right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

Alright, Bankless Nation, I am pleased to bring back on Hayden Adams, the inventor of the Uniswap protocol and CEO of Uniswap Labs. Like many of us, Hayden got into the crypto industry by being convinced to it by one of his friends to get into crypto. So he does the ritual rite of passage by buying the top of 2017 and wrote it all the way down. And then during the bear market, instead of leaving this industry, Hayden did something cool, which was invented Uniswap. Hayden has been on the podcast just once before, and now he's back to debut something pretty damn cool. Hayden, welcome back to the show, my man.

Uh thanks so much for having me.

Of course, of course. And before we get into the detail and the alpha and the announcement that's coming out of Uniswap labs, I just want to do like a quick feelings check-in, just because like I think that's kind of what everyone's really looking for. Ether price, Bitcoin price, crypto prices stabilized. We're not for at least seven days, so like maybe we're feeling a little bit good, but a lot of people are overall like down bad. Uh and this was both your and I, like, uh, you know, like I said, the rite of passage into the crypto world for us. So, as somebody who has been through the bear market uh and bought the top of 2017 and wrote it all the way down, like how overall just feelings check in. How are you feeling right now?

This is is down in the market. But I say that, you know,

I I guess the way that I view it is markets go up and down really fast. Um and they sort of, but they sort of still oscillate around this like fundamental value that's being built.

Uh and you know what's been so exciting is over the past

three years,

uh, you know, since since the last time around, there's just been this like steady progress of new projects and value that's being built and developed. And so, you know, I think that we we saw this last time around with the ICO boom.

Where there was this massive amount, you know, everything went up a huge amount and everything went down a huge amount. But out of all of that was some new fundamental technologies that were being built and developed. A lot of the, even like the early ICOs funded a lot of the early work into DeFi. And then in the out of the 2018 bear market, you know, we had all these different projects, MakerDAO, Uniswap, Compound, that were built and launched. And that helped set the stage for the next, you know, for the next round of new projects. And so we we definitely have maybe the thing that's most different this time around is that there does seem to be, it used to be that crypto, like everything the thing that affected the crypto market was always things that were happening in crypto.

Um, and I think something that's a little bit different this time around is that there does seem to be some element of like macro

uh effects as well, where crypto now has maybe grown to be big enough that it's affected by things that happen uh you know around it in the world. Uh but you know to me.

Something that's really exciting about these times. One way that I think about it is that any project can do well when everything is rampant speculation and when everything is up. And then I think what happens in the bear markets is the projects that do well are the projects that have the most fundamental value and real use case. And so I think bear markets are real time for discovering what is really working, what was what just seemed like it was working and wasn't actually working.

And out of that, we'll be able to develop the next set of use cases and the next set of projects that will set the stage for Web3 in the future.

And you know, judging by how Uniswap Labs is making announcements and just knowing you as a person, doesn't really sound like you're going anywhere doing this bear market. You're gonna s you're gonna stick it out and and wait until the next bull run?

Yeah, it's pretty funny because I mean not I mean you know people a lot of people are new to the space um and so definitely people will reach out and be like are you okay like and you know for

us right we're you know we're building for the long term

we're you know

We're here because we see the fundamental value and promise of this technology. And I think we're still very much in the early days of the uh you know the projects and the value that we built. Um so we're definitely not going anywhere. Uh we definitely have a lot that we're working on, you know, some things being announced today, uh some other things probably being announced later this summer. So we have a lot going on. Um, you know, our team has grown a huge amount. Uh when we launched V3, we were about 12 people. So when we launched V1, it was one person, V2 was four people,

v3 was 12 people, and today we're about uh, well, post uh you know the announcement today, about 85. So our team has grown a lot. We're we're parallel processing some stuff. Um yeah, we're we're really pumped and excited. You can see this is our uh this is our Soho office. You can see a lot of people here hanging out, having a good time.

Yeah, wow, that is

pretty pretty damn good growth. Uh does that eighty five number as crypto prices go down, does that eighty five number of of you know, heads that you have to employ, does that number scare you or are you feeling good about that?

I think that you know we're we're feeling quite good about our positioning today.

Um yeah, I I see that we didn't grow too fast and we're definitely slowing down a little bit now. We had we had a big growth spurt, but we had a lot we wanted to build and we're working on right now. And so uh you know we have we definitely have plenty of runway to build through the through the bear market and

You know, um, we're probably not gonna grow to like 300. You know, we're gonna we we're gonna slow down our hiring um for sure.

Uh but uh yeah, no issues on our end there.

Slow down the hiring but not end the hiring. I love the sound of that. Uh Uniswap still still hiring some people here and there. Um one thing that uh I uh as list uh listeners I paid attention, I have made my way over to to New York, Wellingsburg, and so I actually got to take a peek around the office uh a week ago. That's where we chatted and I got a little bit about the details that we're about to release today. And so from my perspective of things, this is just the first of a number of things that is being uh worked on at Uniswap Labs that uh we'll get about to get into that announcement shortly. Um but just uh from my perspective, like Uniswap Labs is going in a handful of different directions, not just not just one different direction. And let's let's actually talk about um Uniswap Labs. Uh you want to say something? Go for it.

I I just you know, the I'd say that we are working on a number of different different things at once, but it's all with sort of a a clear, unified vision and mission, um, uh and something that we're working towards. And I'd say as the different pieces come out, it will sort of start to come together. Um uh yeah.

Cool. So we're we're getting some breadcrumbs. We're getting some puzzle pieces. We're gonna unveil the first puzzle piece today. And over time, as more and more puzzle pieces become clear, we're gonna be able to map them together and see what the hell is going on over at Uniswap Labs. And the the last topic I want to get through before we actually talk about I'm teasing the hell out of the Bankless Nation right now. The last topic I want to get to before we get to the actual information that got released is Uniswap Labs versus Uniswap protocol. Can you explain the difference between these two things? Who is leading the progress of the Uniswap the protocol and who is leading the progress of Uniswap Labs? Because you're saying you've said a lot of we, right? You know, Uniswap started at one person and then Uniswap v2 started at four people, Uniswap V3 had 12 people, and now you're at 80 people. You said with we a lot, who's we? And like how do we think about the differences between Uniswap Labs and Uniswap protocol?

That's a really good question. And I hope it will be very clarifying. Is so Uniswap Labs is a company, we're a software development company, product development company.

And the Uniswap protocol is a decentralized protocol for exchanging tokens on Ethereum and on other and other EVM chains.

So, you know,

much the way that the Ethereum Foundation or Consensus does not, you know,

Unilaterally control the Ethereum network. The Uniswap protocol is decentralized. We're kind of like the Satoshi or the Vitalik of the Uniswap protocol in that we helped, and by me, we may, I mean myself and other people at the company, helped create the protocol.

But it's highly decentralized. It runs on its own. It uh piggybacks off the decentralization of Ethereum and other blockchains.

Um

and allows people to trade tokens with each other peer to peer. There's, of course, also the Unitoken and the Uniswap governance system.

So, you know, way back in in DeFi summer, there were, you know, one of the ideas and values that came out was community ownership and community participation.

And giving you know communities and early participants uh almost a case and uh part of the direction of decentralized platforms and projects.

And so,

you know, the Unitoken and uh the Uniswap governance system uh is is really you know.

Meant to be

a system that exists around the Uniswap protocol, governing the Uniswap protocol, and overseeing its its direction. And maybe even when just if when we speak about decentralization, there's a lot of different types of decentralization.

To me, you know, the

most decentralized thing.

Right, is something that is automated and autonomous and can run on its own without any governance required. And so that's why the vast majority of the protocols functionality and functions don't require any active governance. And so, you know, people can add liquidity and trade against each other. And there's no sort of unilateral ability for governance to prevent that or for to uh to control that. Um but when it comes to you know future growth and development and uh funding an ecosystem of projects uh around it, uh, you know, having I'd say that like the next tier of decentralization is you know broader distribution and ownership. And so, you know, when we

Did that, you know, the original Uni airdrop, right? A big part of that was giving a lot of ownership

to the early community members and users. And so now the the

there's further decentralization of that part of things.

So Uniswap Labs,

and then you know, out of the Uniswap governance system, we've had a whole bunch of separate independent teams and projects spin up.

With direct funding from the governance system and that report back to the governance system. So, you know, the most popular, or I say like the most successful uh initiative probably to come out of governance, although there's been a whole bunch, uh, is probably the Uniswap Grants Program, uh, which you know was led by uh Ken, who

you know, before he used to lead the Ethereum Foundation uh grants program, uh, was actually a funny story about Ken. He was on the grant committee that helped get Uniswap its original grant uh from the Ethereum Foundation back in 2018. Um so now you know he's leading the Uniswap grants program. Uh

Since you know, he put a proposal directly to the token holders and governance system

and received some funding. And since then, he's allocated out to a, I believe a hundred, they just put out a retrospective, I believe 120 different

uh projects in the in the ecosystem, teams all around the world that are all building different interfaces, education uh tools, you know, uh strategy, liquidity strategies, all these different things built on top of the Uniswap protocol.

Um, so

Uniswap labs.

And you can almost imagine if you look at the Ethereum ecosystem, the role of governance is similar to almost like the role of the Ethereum Foundation within Ethereum.

And then Uniswap Labs is actually a little bit more of something that looks like a little bit more like Consensus in that we're building, we, you know, Consensus also has core development