QUADRIGA INITIATIVE
CRYPTO WATCHDOG & FRAUD RECOVERY PLATFORM
A COMMUNITY-BASED, NOT-FOR-PROFIT
$18 000 USD
JULY 2020
GLOBAL
UNISWAP
DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS
"Uniswap is an Ethereum exchange, built using smart contracts and liquidity pools, as opposed to the order book of a traditional centralized exchange (CEX), such as Binance. With any Ethereum wallet, users can simply connect to the Uniswap application and effortlessly exchange ERC20 tokens without first sending them to the exchange platform account."
"[T]he development of Uniswap was facilitated by Vitalik Buterin’s idea for a decentralized exchange (DEX), which would involve an automated market maker. Actually, the protocol developer himself, Hayden Adams, at first tried to just practice development on Solidity, and later this hobby brought him several grants and $100 000 from the Ethereum Foundation. Now the project went far beyond just entertainment and became one of the most important components of the entire DeFi industry."
"[D]ecentralized exchanges are one of the leading DeFi sectors, whose trading volumes exceeded $1.5 billion and reached the all-time high in June. Uniswap and Curve together processed nearly $800 million, which is more than half of the overall monthly volume."
"DXC (formerly called Uniswap Community) is a community-driven token which is empowered by its own community." "The core purpose of DEX Community is to prevent/avoid possible future scams. Many crypto analysts said that the year 2020 is the year of DEFI and DEX, One example DEX is 'Uniswap', it is the #1 DEX tool that has been used by the scammers. There are so many people already lost their Ethereums by investing in ERC20 scams without any verification/dyor. Our goal is become the #1 verification group in the whole crypto industry by doing 'SAMA' in our group. Our aim is to become the #1 source of trust in terms of smart investing in the whole crypto space."
"Uniswap scams are not a new happening within the crypto space. Uniswap ETH-based decentralized exchange that offers every project a chance to air its views to the world. Notwithstanding, it’s one of the most misused platforms within the DeFi world, with more entities taking advantage of its name and services."
"Scam tokens are a growing problem on the decentralized exchange and liquidity pool Uniswap — owing to the protocol’s open listing policy." "Uniswap, allows users to import any new token simply by pasting its address to the Uniswap’s swap menu."
On July 5th, 2020, "the Defiprime Twitter account noted a ‘DYDX’ token pool purporting association with the similarly tokenless DeFi protocol dYdX, along with a fake ‘Uniswap Community Token.’"
"With any token able to be listed on the platform’s drop-down menu simply by making a GitHub request, the platform’s users are increasingly calling for more stringent vetting to be introduced."
"Uniswap Labs said [July 23rd, 2021] that it was restricting access to dozens of tokens on its trading interface app, including synthetic assets meant to mirror the prices of stock-market giants like Facebook Inc. and Tesla Inc., as well exchange-traded funds such as Invesco’s so-called QQQ that tracks the Nasdaq 100 Index." However, there is no indication of anything done to restrict scam tokens.
"As Uniswap’s protocol is permissionless and both good and bad actors can list tokens through it, you will often see a warning for users to take the initiative in avoiding scammers."
"Rather than searching for tokens or pairs on Uniswap, you can verify you are selecting genuine ones by going via a trusted source, such as the CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko crypto tracking websites. On CoinMarketCap, for example, you can search for the token, select it, then navigate to the trading pairs towards the bottom of the page. If you then click on the relevant pair next to Uniswap, it will take you to the genuine Uniswap page and help you to avoid fake tokens. It also has an option at the top for MetaMask." "Explorers like Etherscan can also be used to check the vital analytics needed to make a more informed decision."
The Uniswap Community project tweeted "They say we are impersonating Uniswap while the truth is we are not impersonating anybody. We are just building a community, and powered by that community." "We would only stop this project once anyone show any acceptable evidence where we included that UCN (Uniswap Community Network) is the official token of Uniswap Dexchange." "We just can't imagine how these users dig up on something unrelated to our project."
"If its just the issue of a 'Name Use' from Uniswap, we will resolve. Our vision is to help the community recover their losses, unlike any other rug projects listed on uniswap out there. We have proven that hours after our launch."
"If people believe we are using 'Uniswap' for marketing, we will change into something more acceptable to the community. We will continue the project with its vision to help the community and no one can stop us. From the community. For the community."
"All DXC airdrop (swap) TOKENS are already sent to former UCN HOLDERS."
Uniswap allows anyone to list a token. Therefore, there have been a massive number of scams with tokens named similarly to popular tokens.
However, in this case, the "Uniswap Community" token was actually started as a separate project complete with a Twitter and website set up, according to it's whitepaper, apparently undertaken to reduce fraud in the industry.
After people got confused, the Uniswap Community project renamed itself to Dex Community and continued to operate for another week before going silent. The website is offline.
HOW COULD THIS HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?
In this case, having a simple registration for projects would have prevented the confusion, and validate that the two projects are run by separate teams and not affiliated. A recommendation to adopt a different name could be proposed during the registration stage.
No Title (Aug 3)
@degenspartan Twitter (Aug 3)
How Does Uniswap Work (Jun 5)
Fake Tokens on Uniswap Are Trying to Cash in on DeFi Hype (Sep 10)
Scam Tokens Flooded Decentralized Exchange — DailyCoin (Sep 10)
Uniswap Reports A Surge In Scam Tokens On The Platform Claiming Affiliation To Popular DeFi Projects - Digital Coin Standard (Sep 10)
Uniswap Restricts Fake-Stock Tokens as Regulatory Scrutiny Grows - BNN Bloomberg (Sep 10)
How to Avoid Buying Uniswap DeFi Scams in 2021 | Hacker Noon (Sep 10)
How to Identify and Avoid Uniswap Scams | Alexandria (Sep 10)
uniswap.community is registered with Mailchimp (Sep 29)
@Dex_Community Twitter (Sep 29)
No Title (Sep 29)
@Dex_Community Twitter (Sep 29)
@Dex_Community Twitter (Sep 29)
@Dex_Community Twitter (Sep 29)
@Dex_Community Twitter (Sep 29)
Fake Tokens on Uniswap Are Trying to Cash in on DeFi Hype - YouTube (Oct 11)
Scam Uniswap App Appears on Google Play Store | News | ihodl.com (Mar 1)
