Original compilation: aididiaojp.eth, Foresight News
Original compilation: aididiaojp.eth, Foresight News
I've wanted to tell this story publicly for years; I'm so conflicted because it's filled with so much love and grief. But some changes in my life made me realize: I need to say goodbye to old stories and move on to new adventures.
Let me restore a scene: At the end of the spring of 2018, the encryption industry in New York was still in a cold winter. I was the CEO of Balance, an Ethereum-based liquidity protocol. When I was extremely frustrated, an extreme idea was born in my mind: all the current dApps are rubbish and need to be optimized and improved.
So I decided to start funding dApp developers. I provided money, time, and a studio, and worked with the developers to move the project forward. I've funded projects like WalletConnect, The Graph, and Uniswap, and held events to attract builders.
At an event in May 2018, one person caught my attention and it was Hayden Adams. He is full of enthusiasm and confidence in his entrepreneurial path. Every time you see him, you will hear him talk about Uniswap. After that, it took me a while to understand the beauty of Uniswap and decided to help Hayden in any way I could.
Hayden and I started getting really close, and we were both trying to do one thing: make Ethereum magical, and we were trying to build startups in an ecosystem with very few solid projects. We supported each other, and I was captivated by his tenacity and focus.
The idea of an automated market maker is not a new idea, and many people have explored the concept before, but Hayden had a key insight: we need liquidity incentives and focus entirely on simplicity. He has explained the two-way trading system to hundreds of people.
We allowed Hayden unlimited use of our office, and when he couldn't pay the rent, Balance and I used limited funds to keep him afloat. This was before Vitalik invested, Hayden had only me as a loyal supporter. Since then, we have started to develop the Balance liquidity protocol.
We launched Balance Exchange in the summer of 2018, powered by ShapeShift's API, as a whole team effort. We work with people from across the ecosystem, including Hayden. We found a great design pattern for trading tokens.
Not long after, Hayden ran out of money again, and I started thinking about how to help him raise money. We looked at everything: from tokens to equity crowdfunding. Eventually Vitalik realized that Uniswap's progress was real, and the Ethereum Foundation stepped in after me.
Then I made a mistake that kept me awake for countless nights: I took Hayden's word for it. He told me that he would let me participate in the first round of financing of Uniswap, and the financing amount would reflect the time and money I invested, and I was very happy to participate. After meeting with Fred Ehrsam, I realized that Hayden needed to work more deeply with Paradigm.
Paradigm is one of the sharpest teams in the cryptocurrency space, and even though it rejected my company Balance, it is clear that they are very focused on the Ethereum ecosystem. I knew Hayden would be a great fit, so I told him to meet Paradigm and bought him a plane ticket to San Francisco.
After Hayden went to San Francisco for a roadshow, he decided to turn the project from a non-profit organization into a start-up company, and he wanted to raise funds and grow. He sent me an investment contract and I sent it to Paragigm. This is the second mistake I made: I put too much trust in Paragigm's legal counsel Dan Robinson and Lianchuang Matt Huang.
Dan Robinson was also at the New York event, and Hayden was close to him. Looking at this photo of the three of us talking about Uniswap in my office, I remember we talked a lot back then. Paradigm approached Dan and Hayden for cooperation opportunities, and they will work together to promote the development of Uniswap.
I'm happy for Hayden, the guy is getting better. He's writing code, working on the UI with our team, and the project is starting to make progress. I consider Hayden one of my closest friends in New York, and honestly, I'd take a bullet for him.
He spends a lot of time with my family, my closest friends. His enthusiasm for the project is contagious. I love watching him work and supporting him as much as I can, it gives me so many great memories.
I introduced Hayden to as many engineers, designers, and financiers as possible, helping the early Uniswap team hire many key people. I was involved in the strategy of only requiring the protocol and control interface, and at this time, I was trying to build and launch Balance.
Suddenly, our relationship completely changed...
Let me tell you about one of the worst months of my life: In March 2019, I lost a member of my family: my grandmother. It was heart-wrenching on multiple levels and I flew home for the funeral.
Then, the day before the funeral, my co-founders at Balance asked me to step down as CEO. This is a very reasonable email sent at a very unreasonable time. To this day, it was the most traumatic thing I have ever experienced in my career, and it sucks to be asked to leave my company.
I actually agree with a lot of their criticisms. I'll leave the rest of the details of that moment for the next memoir.
Some people are happy and some are sad. Uniswap is doing really well, with Hayden raising over $1M.
I thought Hayden was going to let me participate in the Uniswap investment, and it turns out that Paradigm had other ideas. They are not at all interested in having a failed founder on their list of investors for a new unicorn. This also makes perfect sense, except for one small thing.
Hayden never gave me back my investment money. He took the money and never offered to pay it back. He just started ignoring me and I was so sad for various reasons that I couldn't focus on money related things. However, things started to change when the UNI token program started.
Hayden realizes he has to pay off the debt. If I sign a gag order and stop talking about him in public, he pays me back before UNI rolls out. It was one of the most aggressive contracts I've ever seen, so I decided to sue Hayden.
Below are the documents I filed against Hayden, and I'm happy to make them public because I want as many people as possible to pay attention to it. My goal is simple: measure what the community thinks of my contributions. Should I get nothing?
It never occurred to me to take legal action against the founders I backed, that's not in my nature, you can ask the 100+ other founders I backed.
After the launch of the UNI token, I started formal communication with Hayden. There is zero chance of a reasonable resolution, so we filed a formal complaint. Below is a screenshot of the content of the complaint.
At the heart of the debate:
ending:
I want the community to know about this document. The community can choose to ask questions, criticize me, or give me advice. If you think my reasons are flimsy, I would like to use UNI governance to resolve this dispute.
Original link
IOS
Android