Crypto Scam Ads Draw Fierce Criticism from Uniswap Founder After User Loses Life Savings
Hayden Adams, the creator of Uniswap, drew attention to an incident involving a user who lost their entire "mid-six-figure" crypto holdings to a fraudulent search advertisement masquerading as Uniswap.
The founder of Uniswap, a decentralized exchange platform, Hayden Adams, has issued a stark warning to cryptocurrency users regarding deceptive advertisements that impersonate his platform, drawing attention to one particular incident where a user allegedly lost their complete portfolio.
The warning follows a month that witnessed the largest volume of cryptocurrency stolen through fraudulent schemes in nearly a year.
"Scam ads keep returning despite years of reporting," Adams stated in a post shared on X this past Friday. "There were scam Uniswap apps while we waited months for App Store approval," he added.
Bad actors are progressively purchasing advertising space on widely-used search engines, specifically targeting search terms such as "Uniswap," ensuring that when cryptocurrency enthusiasts search for the platform, the highest-ranking result appears legitimate and authentic.
Victims who are not aware of the scam may subsequently link their digital wallets and authorize a transaction, which enables the fraudsters to completely empty their accounts.
A consequence of a "long chain of bad decisions"
A user on X going by the name "Ika" shared his experience in a detailed post, with the heading "I lost everything, what's next?" explaining that his cryptocurrency wallet, which held a value in the mid-six-figure range, was completely drained despite taking extreme precautions. "Disciplined for two years. Half-searching for a web3 job, half-hoping to make it fast enough not to need one," he explained.
"I believe that getting drained isn't bad luck. It's the final consequence of a long chain of bad decisions," Ika stated.
His extensive writeup on the social media platform X was published soon after he shared an image showing a top-ranked Google search result containing a counterfeit Uniswap website address.
This is not the first instance that Uniswap has encountered such fraudulent activity. Back in October 2024, Cointelegraph published a report indicating that fraudsters took advantage of the website's insufficient domain authority and constructed a replica of the platform that appeared identical to the legitimate one, with the exception that it displayed a "connect" button in place of where "get started" was supposed to be and a "bridge" button replacing where "read the docs" should have appeared.
In more recent developments, the total amount of cryptocurrency stolen via exploits and fraudulent activities climbed to $370.3 million last month, representing the highest monthly total in 11 months and marking an almost fourfold increase compared to January 2025.
According to CertiK, a cryptocurrency security firm, out of the 40 separate exploit and scam events that occurred throughout January, the bulk of the total stolen value originated from a single victim who lost approximately $284 million as a result of a social engineering scam.