Hayden Adams, the founder of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, has cautioned users about fraudulent advertisements impersonating the platform, pointing to a case in which a victim reportedly lost their entire crypto holdings.
The warning follows January recording the highest monthly crypto scam losses in 11 months.
“Scam ads keep returning despite years of reporting,” Adams wrote in a post on X on Friday. He added that fake Uniswap apps even appeared while the team waited months for approval from the Apple App Store.
Scammers have increasingly purchased ads on major search engines targeting keywords such as “Uniswap,” causing malicious links to appear as top results and seem legitimate. Unsuspecting users may then connect their wallets and approve transactions, unknowingly granting attackers access to drain their funds.
In a separate post on X titled “I lost everything, what’s next?”, a user named “Ika” said his mid-six-figure crypto wallet was emptied despite what he described as extreme caution. He explained that he had spent two years staying disciplined — partly searching for a Web3 job and partly hoping to grow his holdings quickly enough to avoid needing one.
“I believe that getting drained isn’t bad luck,” Ika wrote. “It’s the final consequence of a long chain of bad decisions.”
The extensive X post followed shortly after he shared a screenshot showing a top Google search result that linked to a fake Uniswap website.
This is not the first time Uniswap has faced such impersonation attempts. In October 2024, Cointelegraph reported that scammers exploited the platform’s limited domain authority by creating a near-identical copy of the site. The fraudulent version replaced the legitimate “get started” button with a “connect” button and swapped “read the docs” for a “bridge” option — subtle changes designed to trick users into linking their wallets.
Meanwhile, crypto-related thefts have surged again. The total value of cryptocurrency stolen through hacks and scams climbed to $370.3 million last month, marking the highest monthly total in 11 months and nearly quadrupling January 2025’s figure.
Blockchain security firm CertiK reported 40 exploit and scam incidents during January. It noted that the bulk of the losses stemmed from a single case in which one victim was allegedly drained of roughly $284 million through a social engineering attack.
