Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams: Product vs Protocol

July 27, 2023

At a time when other DEX builders were launching either a protocol or a consumer product, Uniswap did both.

Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams told our Variant Founder fellows that part of the reason was Uniswap had to make sure the UI worked: “We’re just not a team and project that likes to handwave the problems that hold us back the most.”

So, if Uniswap was working on two fronts, how did it become both the largest decentralized exchange and enable one of Ethereum’s most vibrant third-party ecosystems?

Watch Jesse Walden’s full interview with Hayden below to find out:

The benefits of developing an “anti-hype project” in a bear market (5:31)
Why he launched the protocol and the UI simultaneously (13:20)
Why he believes third-party developers “feel safe” building atop the Uniswap protocol (22:37)
A heuristic for founders to think about before adding new features (29:10)
The “hard journey” for beginners that Uniswap Labs is currently trying to solve (38:00)

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