TL;DR:
- Hayden Adams says Sam Bankman-Fried paid seven figures for Uniswap.com and redirected the domain to rival DEX SushiSwap after Uniswap declined the asking price.
- Uniswap Labs later recovered the domain for free through a 2021 WIPO arbitration ruling that found the redirect illegitimate and potentially confusing.
- The official WIPO record does not name Bankman-Fried or document a seven-figure payment, leaving that part of the story based on Adams’ public account.
Uniswap Labs has reclaimed Uniswap.com without paying for the domain after a dispute that dates back to 2021. In a September 20 post, founder Hayden Adams said the original owners wanted a seven-figure price that Uniswap refused to meet, and claimed Sam Bankman-Fried later bought the domain before redirecting it to rival DEX SushiSwap. Adams says the move ultimately gave Uniswap the opening to recover the domain for free through arbitration, turning what he described as an attempt to antagonize the protocol into a legal victory.
Fun fact, the og owners of https://t.co/bRvDs5brca wanted 7 figures, but we refused to pay that amount
So SBF bought it (for 7 figures) and pointed it to a fork – I guess to flex / mess with us
This malicious use of the domain was enough for our legal team to get it for free https://t.co/ZV0yJhdvZg
— Hayden Adams 🦄 (@haydenzadams) September 20, 2026
WIPO Ruling Returned Uniswap.com to Uniswap Labs
Adams’ account adds a new layer to a case that was formally resolved years ago. Uniswap Labs filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization in May 2021 after Uniswap.com began directing visitors to SushiSwap. The WIPO panel concluded that the redirect did not constitute legitimate use of the domain and ordered it transferred to Uniswap’s legal entity. The September 3, 2021 decision recognized Uniswap’s trademark rights and found that the redirect could create confusion by implying a relationship between the protocol and the competing destination.
The official arbitration record, however, does not identify Bankman-Fried as the buyer and does not document any seven-figure purchase price. It names a Hong Kong respondent alongside a privacy service, creating an important distinction between the formal record and Adams’ later recollection. Bankman-Fried’s alleged role therefore rests on Adams’ public claim rather than documentation contained in the WIPO decision. The episode nevertheless fits into Uniswap’s longer history of defending its brand, which has continued through more recent trademark disputes involving the UNI and UNISWAP names.
The rival at the center of the 2021 redirect was SushiSwap, a protocol launched in 2020 as a fork of Uniswap’s open-source code. Bankman-Fried later became involved during SushiSwap’s governance crisis, temporarily taking control before transferring authority to a multisignature setup. That connection explains why Adams’ claim has attracted attention, but it does not independently prove who purchased Uniswap.com. Crypto Economy’s earlier SushiSwap overview details the protocol’s origins as a Uniswap fork and its early governance transition. Today, Uniswap.com redirects users to Uniswap’s live application, closing a domain dispute whose ownership story has resurfaced five years later. The recovery also gives Uniswap direct control over a valuable brand domain that once sent users toward a competing decentralized exchange during DeFi’s early expansion.
