In this Twitter space, host [Farokh]( of [RugRadio]( speaks with [Mando]( [gldncrypt0]( [Hayden Adams]( Founder of [Uniswap]( & [Scott]( head of NFT product, to talk about new product and feature launch, future of DeFi & NFTs and more.
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Read our notes below to learn more
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**Hayden’s background**
* Born in Brooklyn then grew up in New York.
* Studied mechanical engineering at Stony Brook University.
* Had a roommate in college who talked about crypto and Ethereum everyday way back in 2015 when $ETH was only $0.30.
* Spent a year working as a mechanical engineer at Long Island, New York.
* Started working in crypto 5 years ago after being laid-off as a mechanical engineer.
* Interested and excited about the idea of being able to build tools that are not controlled by any single party.
* Studied [Solidity]( and Ethereum development during the early days in crypto.
* Bought $ETH when it was $50.
* Launched Uniswap v1 during the bear market in 2018.
* There weren’t any DEXs, decentralized lending protocols or NFT marketplaces back then.
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**Future of DeFi**
* There have been a bunch of centralized things exploding in the past few months.
* The platforms that custody users’ funds have very poor levels of transparency, very opaque & mismanaged users’ funds.
* DeFi empowers users and gives them access to tools and applications that they can use safely and are all publicly available onchain.
* Most of the platforms right now are controlled by gatekeepers.
* Building more neutral permissionless platforms and competing with each other to build the best products for users.
* Recent incidents showed the importance of the underlying properties and values.
* Evolving DeFi to provide universal ownership, access to value and value creation.
* Hoping to bring the DeFi world into the NFT space as well.
* Once regulation comes in, NFTs will be used for ownership of all assets and products.
* Getting into the NFT space felt really important in part and to have another service area when it comes to digital ownership and value.
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**Future of NFTs with Uniswap**
* Uniswap’s new NFT aggregator will let users trade NFTs across 8 marketplaces & aggregates all the listings to get the best prices.
* Bringing user bases closer together.
* In the past, only 20% of the people who bought NFTs have used a DEX in the past.
* Upgraded the routing system called Universal Router wherein it will enable users to do things like share approvals, batch token trades with NFT trades and swap any ERC20 token for any NFTs.
* Universal Router will start on $ETH and will expand further on different chains in the future.
* Universal Search Bar where you can search any kind of token.
* The world of tokens, NFTs and Web3 is going to be a social place.
* Excited to see social experiences that combine both tokens and NFTs.
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**Barriers to overcome**
* The biggest barriers are a combination of scaling and gas costs.
* UX difficulties especially for brand new users.
* Private key management.
* Interface between wallets and dApps.
* There’s huge amounts to do in terms of improving user and onboarding experience.
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**Thoughts on current state of the market**
* People who leave during a bear market and people who are here for purely speculation aren’t interested in building the fundamental value of the space.
* During a bull market, everything works.
* During a bear market, fundamentals and quality of the projects start to matter.
* The narratives are more around building.
* Focusing on a bunch of product launches and a lot of features.
* Hoping people or reputable brands to continue to call out obvious scams.
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**Thoughts on recent incidents**
* People who don’t understand crypto very well and have a slightly negative view will think crypto is a mess.
* Decentralization means there’s no central point of control and central point of failure.
* Misuse or mismanage of funds is a nature of CeFi to some extent.
* The only thing that works in CeFi in terms of safety is regulation.
* There was no way for users to verify whether or not FTX users’ funds were being lent out to affiliated market making firms to use for trading or gambling.
* The most powerful things DeFi offers are transparency and self-custody.
* What happened to FTX happened countless times in TradFi.
* Getting more people educated on self-custody and making it easier.
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**Biggest hurdles of DeFi**
* Only touch centralized platforms when it’s mostly needed.
* There’s no way to talk to the fiat system without some level of centralization.
* Getting more businesses to accept crypto as payment.
* The more crypto gets integrated into people’s daily lives, the less need for on and off ramps.
* The entire mission and goal of Uniswap right now is to make things easier and more accessible.
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**Thoughts on Unisocks**
* After raising a seed round with [Paradigm]( in April 2019, hired the first two employees as designer and protocol lead.
* Launched Unisocks in Spring 2019 as an early example of NFT liquidity pools and NFTs being backed by physical assets.
* Given 1000 $UNI to holders of Unisocks during the $UNI airdrop.
* Anyone who uses Uniswap v3 gets issued an NFT if they created a pool.
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**Thought process on NFT aggregator**
* Started looking at the NFT space in January 2021.
* There was a need to connect all the fragmentation across use cases and technical architectures.
* Uniswap has the best approach towards Web3 and served as a strength to move forward.
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**Thoughts on the current product launch**
* Optimizing better prices, more listings and performance on a smart contract level.
* Currently pulling prices across 8 different marketplaces for 122M NFTs every second.
* Tapping into decentralized ethos with the product.
* Allowing more competition to grow.
* Working on getting users to be able to bid and accept bids across 8 different marketplaces.
* Prioritizing on enabling users to sell their NFTs instantly in a neat experience.
* Will be posting updates regarding the NFT product, more products and fun events.
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**Check out these important links**
* [Follow Revelo Intel for more notes like this](
Very in-depth analysis friend. Been a massive fan of Uniswap ever since they built V3 on Polygon tbh. Definitely one of the standards.