Bancor Sues Uniswap for Allegedly Stealing Core DeFi Technology

The team behind the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Bancor has filed a lawsuit against decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, accusing it of copying key technology used in DEXs.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, specifically centers around Bancor’s Constant Product Automated Market Maker (CPAMM) model. Bancor is a liquidity protocol with a total value locked (TVL) of around $59 million, according to DeFiLlama. Patented in 2017, the CPAMM mechanism enables on-chain token swaps without the need for order books.

In the suit, Bancor alleges Uniswap – a DEX with nearly $5 billion in TVL – has used this system since launching its first version in 2018 and continued to build on it through to its latest v4 release in January.

“Bancor’s patented technology is one of the most important innovations in blockchain, and we are exceptionally proud of the role it has played in revolutionizing the world of DeFi,” said Mark Richardson, Project Lead at Bancor, according to a press release. “However, when an organization continuously uses our invention without our authorization and does so as a means of competing with us, we must take action.”

Richardson claimed that for the last eight years, Uniswap has been using the patented technology without Bancor’s permission. “As a result, we have taken legal action to defend our technology for the good of the entire DeFi community,” he said.

In response to the lawsuit, Hayden Adams, the CEO of Uniswap Labs, called the filing “possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen” in a post on X earlier today. He added that he looks forward to not thinking about this “until a lawyer tells me we won.”

Uniswap Labs did not immediately respond to The Defiant’s request for comment. Since news of the lawsuit broke, Uniswap’s UNI token has dropped nearly 2% on the day, and is currently trading at $5.87, according to CoinGecko data.