Hayden Adams: Uniswap – An Auction-Based Decentralized Exchange for Ethereum (#292)

The concept of a decentralized exchange has been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space for many years. Many attempts have been made, but most decentralized exchanges suffered from central points of failure, poor user experience and little liquidity.

Launched during Ethereum's DevCon 2018, Uniswap is one of the first fully decentralized exchanges and managed to become the leading DEX very fast. We were joined by Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams to discuss Uniswap's unique model, the different participants in the protocol and the importance of decentralized exchanges for the blockchain space.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- How Hayden's exploratory project to learn smart contract development took off and became Uniswap
- How Uniswap works and its different participants
- The advantage of using auctions instead of order books
- The role of liquidity providers in Uniswap
- Feedback loops that can make Uniswap markets popular or collapse
- The challenging economics of liquidity shares
- Addressing Arthur Hayes' criticism of decentralized exchanges
- Why Uniswap didn't create a tokeneconomic monetization model

Links mentioned in this episode:
- Uniswap Exchange Protocol: https://bit.ly/2MVWl8i
- Uniswap Whitepaper: https://bit.ly/2MTouN6
- Uniswap: Getting Started & Documentation: https://bit.ly/2FiCdqt
- Unisocks Exchange: https://bit.ly/2IQYi0u
- Distributed 2018: Presentation about Decentralized Exchanges by Arthur Hayes (BitMEX): https://bit.ly/2XpvIMI
- Buidl Asia 2019 Conference in Seoul, Korea on July 22-23: https://bit.ly/2FipiF8
- HackAtom Seoul on July 19-21: https://bit.ly/2KXaGP7

Sponsors:
- Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
- Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/292