The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information about how investors use the decentralized exchange and how it is marketed.
According to Wall Street Journal report, The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating the developer of decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs.
The SEC is seeking information about how investors use the exchange and how it is marketed, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
The exchange’s developer has said that it will assist the regulator with the inquiry. According to the Wall Street Journal, the SEC has declined to comment on the investigation.
Uniswap is the Ethereum blockchain’s largest decentralized exchange by trading volume.
It is still unclear what exactly the SEC wants to know. But the news is a sign of the regulator’s intent to wield greater oversight of decentralized finance (DeFi), something SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is seemingly keen to do.
In any case, no wrongdoing appears to have been alleged at this time.
Gensler has argued that while there may be no central entity in charge of a decentralized exchange, DeFi projects that offer incentives or digital tokens to participants could fall under the purview of SEC regulation.
Gensler commented in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month:
“There’s still a core group of folks that are not only writing the software, like the open-source software, but they often have governance and fees.”
The SEC filed what it called its first case involving securities using DeFi technology last month, charging so-called DeFi lender Blockchain Credit Partners with raising $30 million through allegedly fraudulent offerings.
