Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has accused Citadel Securities of trying to pull decentralized finance into the same regulatory box as Wall Street, after the market maker urged the US SEC to treat DeFi protocols and their developers as traditional intermediaries.
Adams fired off a post on X that quickly made the rounds in crypto circles.
“First Ken Griffin screwed over Constitution DAO,” he wrote, before adding, “Now he’s coming for DeFi, asking the SEC to treat software developers of decentralized protocols like centralized intermediaries.”
He linked directly to Citadel’s submission to the SEC and added, “Bet Citadel has been lobbying behind closed doors on this for years.”
Adams Ridicules Citadel’s Claim That DeFi Lacks Fair Access
He saved his sharpest line for a specific passage in the filing.
Adams pointed to Citadel’s claim that DeFi cannot provide “fair access” to markets and responded, “Okay thats all pretty bad, but the actual nerve for one of their arguments to be that there is no way for DeFi protocols to provide ‘fair access’ of all things lmao.”
He then wrote, “Makes sense the king of shady tradfi market makers doesn’t like open source, peer-to-peer tech that can lower the barrier to liquidity creation.”
The clash stems from a lengthy letter Citadel Securities sent to the SEC on tokenized equities and DeFi trading venues. In that document, the firm tells regulators that many so-called decentralized systems bring together buyers and sellers in a coordinated way and therefore fit existing legal definitions of exchanges and broker dealers.
It argues that activities in DeFi should not receive lighter treatment simply because they are implemented in code on a blockchain.
Firm Rejects Idea That Open Protocols Should Avoid Intermediary Rules
Citadel goes further and lists a wide range of players in the DeFi stack, from trading interfaces and smart contract developers to validators and liquidity providers. According to the filing, many of these actors take transaction-based fees or influence how orders are routed, which, in Citadel’s view, often makes them functionally similar to regulated financial intermediaries.
The firm urges the SEC to apply a technology-neutral approach so that the same activity attracts the same rules regardless of whether it runs through a matching engine or a smart contract.
A central concern in the letter is tokenized stocks. Citadel warns that allowing tokenized shares of US companies to trade freely on DeFi protocols would create what it describes as a shadow equity market outside the national market system. It says such a structure could fragment liquidity and bypass the reporting, surveillance and investor protection framework that currently governs equities.
The firm also resists calls from some crypto industry groups for broad exemptions. Several DeFi advocates have asked the SEC to recognise that open source protocols and validator sets do not operate like traditional intermediaries and should not have to register as exchanges or broker dealers.
Crypto Devs Fear Wall Street Rules Would Stifle Permissionless Innovation
Citadel counters that the agency lacks authority to carve out a separate regime for tokenized equities and argues that any fundamental change to how US stocks trade belongs with Congress.
If regulators accept Citadel’s framing, protocol teams, front-end operators, routing wallets, market makers and possibly even DAO participants could face registration, capital rules and best execution duties that were designed for broker-dealers.
Many in crypto see that outcome as incompatible with global, permissionless software that can be deployed by small teams and maintained by distributed communities.
Adams framed the episode as part of a longer story. In his post, he reminded followers that Citadel founder Ken Griffin outbid ConstitutionDAO at a Sotheby’s auction in 2021, thwarting the crypto collective’s attempt to buy a rare copy of the US Constitution.
By opening his thread with “First Ken Griffin screwed over Constitution DAO,” then pivoting straight into the SEC fight, he linked that high-profile clash with Citadel’s latest move in Washington.
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