The concept of a decentralized exchange has been a holy grail in the cryptocurrency space for many years. Many attempts have been made, but most decentralized exchanges suffered from central points of failure, poor user experience and little liquidity. Launched during Ethereum's DevCon 2018, Uniswap is one of the first fully decentralized exchanges and managed to become the leading DEX very fast. We were joined by Uniswap Founder Hayden Adams to discuss Uniswap's unique model, the different participants in the protocol and the importance of decentralized exchanges for the blockchain space. Topics discussed in this episode:How Hayden's exploratory project to learn smart contract development took off and became UniswapHow Uniswap works and its different participantsThe advantage of an automated exchange instead of using order booksThe role of liquidity providers in UniswapFeedback loops that can make Uniswap markets popular or collapseThe challenging economics of liquidity sharesAddressing Arthur Hayes' criticism of decentralized exchangesWhy Uniswap didn't create a tokeneconomic monetization model Links mentioned in this episode: Uniswap Exchange ProtocolUniswap WhitepaperUniswap: Getting Started & DocumentationUnisocks Exchange[Distributed 2018: Presentation about Decentralized Exchanges by Arthur Hayes (BitMEX)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8w8us0sQvk (arthur hayes))Buidl Asia 2019 Conference in Seoul, Korea on July 22-23HackAtom Seoul on July 19-21 Sponsors: Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicksTrail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research Support the show, consider donating: BTC: 1CD83r9EzFinDNWwmRW4ssgCbhsM5bxXwg (https://epicenter.tv/tipbtc)BCC: 1M4dvWxjL5N9WniNtatKtxW7RcGV73TQTd (http://epicenter.tv/tipbch)ETH: 0x8cdb49ca5103Ce06717C4daBBFD4857183f50935 (https://epicenter.tv/tipeth) This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/292