Uniswap was created in November 2018 by Hayden Adams, who had been a mechanical engineer at the German corporation Siemens. He wanted to create a decentralised, deregulated exchange, known as DEX for short, that did not require users to make a deposit before using it nor open an account and provide sensitive, personal information.

Uniswap’s reliance on mathematical models and liquidity pools rather than last trade prices and order books such as those used by Bitcoin has proven very successful, and it has received financial backing from large venture capital firms.