Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has revealed new details regarding Sam Bankman-Fried’s maneuvers in the crypto industry. The former FTX chief reportedly spent seven figures to secure control of the Uniswap.com web address.
The original domain owner had initially offered Uniswap.com to Uniswap Labs, asking for millions of dollars to part with the web address. Adams and his team turned down the hefty price tag, leaving the domain in third-party hands.
SBF subsequently stepped in and paid the full asking price. Instead of building on it, he configured an automatic redirect to a competitor. Visitors typing Uniswap.com into their browsers were immediately routed to the SushiSwap interface - a decentralized exchange protocol created by forking Uniswap’s source code.
The Dispute Moves to WIPO
Uniswap Labs responded to the web traffic hijacking by taking legal action. The team filed a formal complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in May 2021 to reclaim the domain corresponding to their trademark.
Official WIPO documents show that the intellectual property dispute lasted for four months. The administrative panel issued its final decision on September 3, 2021, ruling fully in favor of Adams’ team. WIPO ordered that control of the domain be transferred back to Uniswap Labs.
The WIPO panel cited a key rationale for the transfer ruling: registering a competitor’s trademark and using it to divert traffic to a rival product was determined to constitute bad faith under international intellectual property law.
SushiSwap’s Firm Denial
SBF’s role as the financial backer behind the domain purchase went unnoticed when the WIPO dispute was initiated in May 2021. That same month, SushiSwap representative 0xMaki issued a public statement to clear the project’s name.
0xMaki maintained at the time that SushiSwap’s core team had never spent millions of dollars to acquire Uniswap.com. Adams’ recent disclosure vindicates 0xMaki’s statement while uncovering the identity of the anonymous buyer who was never named in the WIPO decision.
Ultimately, the redirection tactic yielded no long-term benefits for SushiSwap. SBF’s million-dollar purchase proved useless once the WIPO panel stepped in to halt the domain hijacking.
Reported by crypto.news.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
