A newly surfaced revelation from the early days of the decentralized finance (DeFi) boom has cast fresh light on the aggressive corporate tactics that defined the rivalry between major automated market makers. According to a disclosure by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried quietly paid a seven-figure sum to acquire the Uniswap.com domain name in 2021, routing its web traffic directly to competitor SushiSwap before Uniswap Labs successfully secured the address through international legal channels.
As reported by crypto.news, Adams shared the details of the transaction, stating that the original owners of the domain had initially demanded millions of dollars from the Uniswap team. After Uniswap Labs declined to pay the steep asking price, Bankman-Fried reportedly stepped in to acquire the domain himself, establishing a temporary redirect to SushiSwap—a decentralized exchange that had launched as a direct code fork of Uniswap. Adams speculated that the acquisition was intended “to flex / mess with us,” highlighting the highly competitive and often personal nature of early Web3 development.
The 2021 SushiSwap Redirect and the Secret Buyer
The dispute over the domain first became public in May 2021, when cryptocurrency users noticed that entering Uniswap.com—which was not the official interface of Uniswap Labs at the time—redirected them to SushiSwap. While contemporary reporting from the era documented this activity, the identity of the domain’s ultimate buyer remained a mystery. At the time, SushiSwap contributor 0xMaki publicly denied that the SushiSwap core development team or treasury had purchased the domain, leaving observers to wonder who was funding the redirection campaign.
Historical context provided by Pluang indicates that Bankman-Fried had deep ties to SushiSwap prior to this dispute. In September 2020, during a high-profile governance crisis, SushiSwap’s anonymous creator, Chef Nomi, unexpectedly transferred control of the protocol’s developer funds and admin keys to Bankman-Fried. The FTX founder oversaw the migration of SushiSwap’s liquidity before transitioning governance to a decentralized multisignature structure. This established relationship aligns with Adams’ assertion that Bankman-Fried was positioned to leverage the domain to bolster the competing platform.
The WIPO Legal Battle and Bad-Faith Ruling
Unable to resolve the issue directly, Uniswap Labs filed an intellectual property complaint in May 2021 with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The official case records reveal that the respondent of record was “Registration Private, Domains By Proxy, LLC / Future XXX,” a corporate entity based in Hong Kong. The published WIPO documents did not explicitly name Bankman-Fried or disclose the financial terms of the underlying transaction, but they did confirm several elements of Adams’ narrative.
During the proceedings, the respondent argued that because SushiSwap was an open-source derivative of the Uniswap protocol, the redirect did not constitute trademark infringement. The three-member WIPO panel rejected this defense, ruling that the open-source nature of a protocol’s underlying software does not give third parties the right to use identical registered trademarks in domain names to confuse consumers. The panel reviewed archived screenshots from the Wayback Machine confirming that the domain resolved directly to SushiSwap, which operated in the exact same decentralized trading market as Uniswap Labs.
Ultimately, WIPO determined that the domain had been registered and used in bad faith, creating an unacceptable risk of implied affiliation. On September 3, 2021, the panel ordered the immediate transfer of Uniswap.com to Universal Navigation Inc. (operating as Uniswap Labs). This legal mechanism allowed Uniswap to secure the domain without paying the seven-figure ransom demanded by the seller, though the company did incur undisclosed legal expenses during the process.
Trademark Enforcement and Current Status
Today, Uniswap.com functions as a secure, direct redirect to Uniswap’s official decentralized application interface at app.uniswap.org. The resolution of this case has served as an institutional blueprint for trademark enforcement in the Web3 space. Uniswap Labs maintains strict trademark guidelines, advising third parties that they may not use names like UNISWAP, UNI, or UNISWAP LABS in domain registrations, emphasizing that brand protection is critical to preventing phishing and consumer fraud.
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence following the collapse of his FTX exchange. On June 12, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit formally affirmed his fraud conviction and $11 billion forfeiture order. While the federal appeal focused strictly on the criminal operations of FTX and Alameda Research, Adams’ recent disclosures add a new chapter to the documented history of Bankman-Fried’s aggressive attempts to dominate the decentralized financial ecosystem.