Hayden Adams, founder of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, has warned users about fraudulent ads impersonating the platform, highlighting a case in which a victim reportedly lost everything.
It comes after January saw the highest amount of money stolen in crypto scams in 11 months.
“Scam ads keep returning despite years of reporting,” Adams said in an X post on Friday. “There were scam Uniswap apps while we waited months for App Store approval,” he said.
Scammers are increasingly buying ads on popular search engines targeting keywords like “Uniswap,” so when crypto users search for it, the top result looks official.
Unsuspecting users may then connect their wallets and approve a transaction, allowing scammers to drain their entire funds.
A consequence of a “long chain of bad decisions”
An X user named “Ika” said in an X article, titled “I lost everything, what’s next?” that his crypto wallet, valued in the mid-six-figure range, was drained despite his extreme care. “Disciplined for two years. Half-searching for a web3 job, half-hoping to make it fast enough not to need one,” he said.
“I believe that getting drained isn’t bad luck. It’s the final consequence of a long chain of bad decisions,” Ika said.
The lengthy post on X came shortly after he posted a screenshot of a top Google search result with an inauthentic Uniswap link.
It isn’t the first time that Uniswap has experienced this issue. In October 2024, Cointelegraph reported that scammers recognized the website’s lack of domain authority and created a version of the site that looks exactly like the real one, except that it featured a “connect” button where “get started” should have been and a “bridge” button where “read the docs” should have been.
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More recently, the value of cryptocurrency stolen through exploits and scams reached $370.3 million last month, the highest monthly figure in 11 months and a nearly fourfold rise from January 2025.
Crypto security company CertiK said that of the 40 exploit and scam incidents over January, the majority of the total value stolen came from one victim that lost around $284 million due to a social engineering scam.
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