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- 1 Hayden Adams, Founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs, is a former mechanical engineer at Siemens.
- 2 He created the Ethereum based decentralized exchange on November 2, 2018.
Hayden Adams was born on October 21, 1992, in the United States. He graduated from Stony Brook University in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Before Uniswap establishment, Adams worked as a researcher at Columbia University Medical Center from June 2012 to October 2014.
He worked at Vista Wearable Inc.as a Mechanical Engineering Intern from June 2015- September 2015 and also served as an engineer at Siemens from July 2016 to July 2017. Furthermore, he was the founder of RestaurantDeals which started in 2010 and ended on September 18, 2011.
While working as an engineer at Siemens, he did design exploration for clients in the automotive and aerospace industries. Along with this, he also studied Java macros and Unix at Siemens.
After a year of working at Siemens, he was laid off. In 2017, at the age of 26, he was introduced to his first project of crypto through a Reddit post that was sent to him by his college friend, Karl Floersch, who was working with Ethereum Foundation. Floersch, while studying at Stony Brook University, had developed an interest in cryptocurrency. After completing graduation, he entered the crypto world.
How Hayden Adams Turned to the Crypto World
Encouraged by his friend Floersch, Hayden made two decisions; first, he purchased Ethereum in 2017, and secondly, because his friend informed him about the huge shortage of smart contract developers, he started to learn code. Adams started learning JavaScript and Solidity.
Later, Adams became engaged with his Uniswap proof of concept. He began attending conferences in New York and Canada and also crypto conferences in Seoul. Though he did not get the ticket to attend the conference, he managed to talk to Vitalik Buterin with the help of Floersch.
Adams would sit in the office day and night to code Uniswap. The Ethereum Foundation granted $65,000 that allowed him to carry out a full audit of the project’s code. Furthermore, Adams moved Uniswap from Solidity to Vyper, a programming language designed for Ethereum smart contracts.
On November 4, 2018, Adams launched Uniswap version 1. He said it lacked certain necessary features, but, among other things, orders could be routed to Ethereum and token. After the launch of the UNI token, Uniswap saw an immense rise in popularity. Many updates have been introduced since its launch.
Hayden Adams’ Perception Behind Uniswap
Uniswap is made with the view to solve the two major problems related to cryptocurrency exchanges- lack of decentralization and liquidity fragmentation. Traditional exchanges relied on intermediaries, centralized order books, and lengthy withdrawal processes, which limited transparency and accessibility.
To overcome the above challenges Hayden uses the concept of automated market making (AMM) in the exchange. Uniswap uses smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain which helps to create liquidity pools where users can trade ERC-20 tokens directly from their wallets. This gives a seamless transaction.
In 2022, Adams found his bank accounts with JPMorgan Chase had been terminated with no cited reason. However, he suspected the move had something to do with his participation in the cryptocurrency sector.
In April, Uniswap launched Uniswap Labs Ventures, a new web3-focused venture capital fund, and aimed to put money into the industry and engage in related governance systems. Uniswap Labs is responsible for the Uniswap protocols creation.
Other Investments and Future Plan of Uniswap
Besides Uniswap, Hayden Adams has made two investments. The latest investment made was in a seed round on June 8, 2023, for Lens Protocol. The total amount raised was $15M, and the earlier investment was made on November 3, 2022, with the organization Wallet Connect.
Adams has big plans for the future of Uniswap, wanting to improve the platform by making it more user-friendly. He wants to add more features to the platform to make it more attractive and appealing to the users. He wishes to make Uniswap a go-to platform for the buying and selling of digital assets in a decentralized way.
Hayden Adams is active on Linkedin and Twitter, where he promotes Uniswap and shares his opinion on the state of the financial systems very openly.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
