The Us Securities and Substitution Commission is reportedly investigating the startup behind the earth's largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, Uniswap.

The U.S. securities regulator has initiated a probe into Uniswap'due south main programmer, Uniswap Labs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The report says that enforcement attorneys are now looking for data nigh Uniswap's marketing and investor services, citing bearding sources familiar with the affair.

A spokesperson for Uniswap Labs reportedly said the business firm is "committed to complying with the laws and regulations governing our industry and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry."

Uniswap is a decentralized commutation that enables users to swap between Ethereum-based coins and tokens without a central entity. The commutation is ranked equally the largest decentralized commutation, with a $1.5-billion trading book over the past 24 hours at the time of writing, co-ordinate to information from CoinMarketCap.

A spokesperson for the SEC declined to annotate on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation to Cointelegraph. Uniswap did non immediately respond to Cointelegraph's request for annotate.

The news comes amid the U.S. regulators paying increased attention to the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry, with SEC chairman Gary Gensler last month announcing the authorisation's plans for more than crypto-related rules targeting DeFi, token offerings, and stablecoins. In late August, the regulator signed a $125,000 deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to go tech assist in monitoring and regulating the DeFi industry.

Prior to the SEC'due south increased efforts to wait into the DeFi, Uniswap delisted dozens of tokens and tokenized stocks from its trading platform in tardily July, citing growing regulatory pressure. "Nosotros monitor the evolving regulatory landscape," Uniswap said, pointing out like moves taken past other DeFi players.

Related: Crypto Mom: True decentralization is the only thing that will save DeFi projects

By its definition, the DeFi industry is a blockchain-based form of finance that does not rely on whatever central financial intermediaries, operating transactions through automatic protocol mechanisms known equally smart contracts instead. The industry has seen massive growth in contempo years, jumping from around $8 billion in full value last September to more than $174 billion at the time of writing.

In line with DeFi principles, decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Uniswap don't have a central person or team responsible for running the protocol, operated and supervised either automatically or by the participants. Co-ordinate to the crypto investor and entrepreneur Alistair Milne, regulators won't be able to close down DeFi smart contracts like Uniswap but could potentially brand DeFi transactions illegal in a similar style to transacting on the dark spider web.