Uniswap Labs, the development-side of the immutable Uniswap protocol, have announced the removal of 100 crypto assets from its exchange platform.

The move comes amid industry-wide pressure from financial watchdogs and regulators, with global authorities seeking to clamp down on what are increasingly being perceived as securities assets.

Uniswap is one of the leading decentralised exchanges by trading volume, with the backend Uniswap protocol version 2 and version 3 facilitating in excess of $1B of trades in the past day alone.

Importantly, the Uniswap Protocol — unlike the interface — is a set of autonomous, decentralised, and immutable smart contracts. It provides unrestricted access to anyone with an internet connection

In a post on the Uniswap Labs blog, the exchange revealed that it actively kept tabs on regulatory moves – such as the recent crypto clampdown in South Korea, and has decided to de-list tokens with high-regulatory risk.

“We monitor the evolving regulatory landscape,” said the post.

“Today, consistent with actions taken by the other DeFi interfaces, we have taken the decision to restrict access to certain tokens.”

De-risking the platform

It is clear that this latest move by Uniswap is purely about de-risking the platform, so as to ensure it can continue operations for other token offerings and as a leading swap-exchange platform.

Indeed, the regulatory debate surrounding whether crypto assets can be considered securities products is dogged by controversy, and the titanic courtroom showdown between the American SEC and Ripple (XRP) can be seen as the litmus test for potential crypto securities classifications.

However, not all crypto assets are made equal – and some crypto offerings are more obviously securities assets than others – thus this move from Uniswap can be seen as the pre-emptive targeting of digitally tokenised stocks, options tokens, insurance tokens, and synthetic assets stemming from crypto derivatives platforms.

Uniswap (UNI) was trading at $19.83 at the time of writing.

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