Mary-Catherine Lader, Chair and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Uniswap Labs, has officially left the company after four years of service.
Lader will continue to serve in an advisory role for a short period before moving on to a new project. A representative from Uniswap stated that the company 'will continue to build on her contributions.'
Joining Uniswap in 2021 after leaving BlackRock – where she served as Chief Operating Officer and headed the global Aladdin Sustainability division – Lader was one of the first prominent figures to leave traditional finance for the crypto industry.
Currently, Uniswap – the largest decentralized trading protocol on Ethereum – has yet to announce a successor to the Chairman position. Founded by Hayden Adams in 2018, Uniswap remains central to the crypto ecosystem and is the DEX with the largest trading volume in the market. Uniswap has never been hacked or exploited for security vulnerabilities, which gives users more confidence when providing liquidity pools here.
Unlike centralized exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, or Kraken, Uniswap allows users to swap tokens directly with each other through smart contracts. In the past 30 days, trading volume on this platform has exceeded $73 billion, according to data from DefiLlama.
The impact of Mary-Catherine Lader at Uniswap
In her role as Chair and COO, Lader has led the development of Uniswap's internal infrastructure, including finance, legal, human resources, marketing, policy, and user support – transforming Uniswap from a tech-focused startup into a more professionally structured organization.
In October 2022, Uniswap successfully raised $165 million, with a valuation of approximately $1.66 billion.
Notably, in February of this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) concluded its investigation into Uniswap, which stemmed from the Wells Notice issued in April 2024. The case was closed without any sanctions from the regulatory agency.