Why did Uniswap's early investors and founders start a public feud on Twitter?

Author: Jordan, PANews

Uniswap remains the undisputed leader in the DEX space within the cryptocurrency market. However, as an early investor in the project, Balance.io CEO Ric Burton recently revealed some little-known behind-the-scenes stories from Uniswap's early days and had a public spat with Uniswap founder Hayden Adams on Twitter. Ric Burton even took Hayden to court, but Hayden claimed that all of this was a lie.

PANews has compiled the content from both sides as follows:

Ric Burton posted a lengthy message on Twitter, stating that for many years, he wanted to publicly tell this story but hesitated to do so, as it is filled with love and sadness. However, due to some changes in his life, he realized that some old stories need to be made public; otherwise, he would not be able to move on to new adventures.

Let’s go back to the spring of 2018 in New York, when summer was approaching, but the cryptocurrency industry had entered a winter, and the entire market was shrouded in a depressive mood. At that time, I was still serving as the CEO of Balance.io, a company that provided interface services on Ethereum, founded because we felt that the vast majority of Dapps were terrible. So, I decided to fund some Dapp developers, providing them with money, time, studio space, and love, and invested in projects like WalletConnect, The Graph, and Uniswap.

At that time, one developer left a very deep impression on me: Hayden Adams. He was in "battle" mode, and every time I saw him, he would talk about Uniswap. It took me a while to understand the project, but I was deeply attracted to it, so I decided to help him as much as I could.

At that time, Hayden Adams and I had a very close relationship. We were both working hard to do one thing: make Ethereum more magical. While trying to establish a startup in an ecosystem with not many reliable projects, Hayden Adams and I supported each other, and I admired his resilience and focus.

The idea of an Automated Market Maker (AMM) was not new. Many people had explored this concept before. However, Hayden Adams had a key insight: the need to incentivize liquidity and focus entirely on usability. When Hayden Adams could not afford rent, Balance and I used our limited funds to help him make ends meet, allowing him unlimited access to our studio. At that time, Vitalik Buterin had not invested at this stage, and Hayden Adams only had one loyal believer, which was me.

Next, we began working on the exchange interface.

In the summer of 2018, we launched Balance Exchange, supported by the ShapeShift API, which was the result of the entire team's engineering efforts. At that time, Balance Exchange collaborated with people from the entire crypto ecosystem, including Hayden Adams, and we found a great design pattern for exchanging tokens.

However, Hayden Adams ran out of money again, so I began to think about how to help him raise funds and explored all possibilities: from issuing tokens to equity crowdfunding. Eventually, Vitalik Buterin realized that Uniswap had great potential, and the Ethereum Foundation participated in the investment.

At this point, I made a mistake that kept me awake for countless nights: I believed Hayden Adams when he told me he would let me participate in Uniswap's next round of financing to "compensate" me for the time and money I had previously invested. I was very happy at that time, so I introduced him to Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Paradigm, because I thought Hayden Adams needed Paradigm's support. They are one of the sharpest teams in the cryptocurrency field and care deeply about the ecosystem (even though Paradigm rejected investing in my company, Balance). But I knew Hayden Adams would be a very suitable candidate, so I told him he could visit Fred Ehrsam and paid for his travel expenses.

So, Hayden Adams came to San Francisco and presented Uniswap to Paradigm, deciding to transform the project from a nonprofit organization into a startup, even hoping to raise a larger round of financing—one could say I "sent" him to Paradigm, which was my second mistake.

Dan Robinson is a programmer/lawyer at Paradigm, and the following picture shows him discussing Uniswap with Hayden Adams and us in New York; you can see we all looked spirited.

At that time, I was genuinely happy for Hayden Adams; this guy's situation was improving. He was fully immersed in coding and working with our team on interface ideas. The Uniswap project was also making progress, and I once thought Hayden Adams was one of my closest friends in New York. Honestly, I was even willing to take a bullet for him. Hayden Adams got along well with my family, my closest friends, and my old friends; his enthusiasm was infectious. I loved watching him work and did everything I could to support him; we shared many wonderful memories.

I introduced Hayden Adams to as many engineers, designers, and finance people as possible, helping the early Uniswap team hire many key individuals.

But then, in the next moment, the atmosphere of our relationship completely changed…

In March 2019, my grandmother passed away, so I flew home to attend the funeral, and I was deeply saddened during those days. However, on the day before the funeral, the co-founder of Balance asked me to resign as CEO and sent me an email, which was a message received at a very bad time. To this day, that period remains one of the most painful experiences of my career; after all, being asked to leave your own company feels terrible.

However, Uniswap was doing surprisingly well; Hayden Adams raised over a million dollars. I thought he intended to involve me, but it turned out Paradigm had other ideas—they did not want a failed founder to appear in Uniswap's roster, which was a completely reasonable thought.

However, one thing dissatisfied me. Hayden Adams never gave me any dividends; he took that money for himself and never offered to compensate me. He started ignoring me. However, when the UNI token plan began, things started to change again. Hayden Adams realized he had to repay his debts, so he asked me to sign a gag order prohibiting me from mentioning his name in any public setting. As long as I agreed, he would repay me before the UNI token launch. One could say this was one of the most aggressive contracts I had ever seen, so now—I decided to sue him, and here are screenshots of the lawsuit documents:

Please forgive me for taking the time to write down all these stories, and I want the community to have time to digest this document. Everyone can ask me questions, criticize me, oppose any claims, and give me constructive feedback—anything is fine. If you think what I said is completely unreasonable, you can also tell me, as I want to resolve this dispute using Uniswap's governance approach.

Next, let’s take a look at Hayden Adams' response:

Ric Burton is one of many early supporters I met about eight months after building Uniswap. I feel sad and disappointed by his recent comments, which are highly misleading and outright lies. I have been hesitant to respond to Ric Burton because he is currently suing me (in fact, most of his claims have already been dismissed), but after careful consideration, I still want to share some details to clarify the facts.

At that time, Ric Burton did indeed have the opportunity to invest in Uniswap. I sent him a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) with a blank amount so that he could fill in the amount he wanted to invest, but he chose not to do so, citing that his company, Balance, could only sustain operations for about a month.

Ric Burton confused the timeline and facts, conflating his rejection of the SAFE with the funds he had invested prior. To clarify, he did provide me with some funding, but this occurred in the early stages of Uniswap, and he later declined the opportunity to invest in Uniswap again. After that, I offered to repay his investment, but it was rejected.

Ric Burton's claim that I obtained funding from Paradigm was his idea is also incorrect. I knew Dan Robinson before I met Ric Burton; we became friends, and it was Dan Robinson who introduced me to Paradigm. When Ric Burton says his breach of contract claim is going to trial, he is lying, and this claim has already been dismissed by the judge—all records are public.

I could continue to debunk more lies in Ric Burton's recent tweets, but I ultimately decided to cut ties with him because he treats those around him, including my friends and colleagues, very poorly. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the role Ric Burton played in Uniswap's development history. I am sure Ric Burton will criticize my response, but I will not respond further.

Thank you very much for all the support people have given me; now I need to get back to work.