Is it dangerous for the DeFi to stay in America?
Decentralized Finance is a marvellous invention: with an open-source code run on a blockchain, no central authority can intervene in its processes. 2021 saw the DeFi becoming more liquid and user-friendly, which explains its extraordinary growth: since the beginning of the year the Total Value Locked increased x6 from $20Bn to $120Bn. However, regulatory pressure is mounting, especially in the US, and it can pose a risk to the companies developing DeFi protocols.
Uniswap, world’s biggest DEX (decentralized exchange), has raised many eyebrows last week, when it announced the delisting of a number of tokens from its website, mostly including those that can be classified as securities: tokenized stocks, options, insurance-base tokens and synthetic assets. With over $10Bn traded weekly on the platform, US-based Uniswap is understandably afraid of a regulatory crackdown, which is quite likely in the fast-deteriorating US crypto climate. It tried to downplay the change by precising that, unlike interface, the underlying Uniswap protocol is autonomous and decentralized, and it stayed the same. Without interface, however, there’s little use in it, at least for the non-coding folk. Moreover, the decision to delist was taken in a centralized fashion, without any vote among UNI token holders, which is not cool and goes against the decentralization principles.
It’s difficult to speak in the name of Uniswap, who probably did the necessary thing to keep themselves safe. However, the DeFi is too ingenious to be stopped by one country’s regulations, and it will develop – in America or elsewhere.
Here’s an idea, Uniswap: have you considered moving to El Salvador to continue business from there?
