Uniswap COO Mary-Catherine Lader on the future of crypto and DeFi

Being chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at Uniswap Labs, the com­pa­ny behind the devel­op­ment of the largest decen­tral­ized exchange on Ethereum, Lad­er sees great val­ue in decen­tral­ized pro­to­cols specifically. 

To her, not all prod­ucts with­in the space are cre­at­ed equal, and that has been seen through­out the ongo­ing Cryp­to Win­ter. Fol­low­ing the Ter­ra sta­ble­coin col­lapse in May, count­less cen­tral­ized projects and lenders dete­ri­o­rat­ed, leav­ing investors at a loss and mar­ket sen­ti­ment very fear­ful. But, even still, “lead­ing DeFi pro­to­cols like Uniswap are suc­ceed­ing in these tough mar­kets because the tech­nol­o­gy is fun­da­men­tal­ly bet­ter than today’s rails,” Lad­er, known as “MC,” tells For­tune. 

Her case in point, at least when it comes to Uniswap: Despite an over­all decline in cryp­to VC invest­ment, Uniswap Labs just announced a $165 mil­lion Series B fund­ing round, which val­ues the com­pa­ny at $1.66 bil­lion.

Aside from its fresh val­u­a­tion, what dif­fer­en­ti­ates Uniswap is the tech­nol­o­gy behind it, accord­ing to Lad­er. Unlike a cen­tral­ized exchange, the Uniswap pro­to­col oper­ates as a ful­ly non­cus­to­di­al, per­mis­sion­less, and self-exe­cut­ing enti­ty through the use of smart contracts—or col­lec­tions of code that run on a blockchain. 

“This tech­nol­o­gy can trans­form mar­kets at a much greater scale,” said Lad­er, adding that to her pro­to­cols like Uniswap are “more trans­par­ent, and when done right, have reduced risk of oper­at­ing errors, and low­er bar­ri­ers to access.”

This belief is what drove Lad­er to leave her Wall Street career behind, not­ing that “auto­mat­ed mar­ket-mak­ing and decen­tral­ized exchanges have huge poten­tial in cap­i­tal markets—well beyond its use in cryp­to today.”

‘Foundational technology’

Pri­or to Uniswap, Lad­er held sev­er­al lead­er­ship posi­tions at Black­Rock, and at Gold­man Sachs before that. Unlike most of her peers at the time, Lad­er took an inter­est in cryp­to very ear­ly, start­ing at a sem­i­nar she attend­ed in 2011. From then, she kept blockchain tech­nol­o­gy in mind through­out her career.

One such time hap­pened to be just two weeks into work­ing at Black­Rock. Dur­ing a com­pa­ny-wide town hall in 2015, CEO Lar­ry Fink respond­ed to a few ques­tions from employ­ees, Lad­er recalled. One ques­tion was about blockchain, and, accord­ing to Lad­er, Fink seemed to express that he viewed the tech­nol­o­gy as being most­ly used for mon­ey laun­der­ing. (Fink has since expressed a dif­fer­ent opin­ion.) 

Lad­er dis­agreed, and fol­low­ing the town hall, she sent a memo to the head of her group detail­ing, in her opin­ion, the oppor­tu­ni­ty Black­Rock would regret­tably miss by dis­miss­ing the poten­tial of the tech­nol­o­gy. Her memo was for­ward­ed to the C‑suite, Lad­er said, and to her sur­prise, it was well received. In return, Lad­er was giv­en the lead on the firm’s first blockchain work­ing group.

She went on to become the COO of the company’s dig­i­tal wealth busi­ness, and then the glob­al head of its sus­tain­abil­i­ty busi­ness, all the while, “I was pay­ing atten­tion to cryp­to and felt like there would be a day that I worked in it full time, but I want­ed to make sure I joined a com­pa­ny that was at the application-level—with a prod­uct peo­ple could use, a fun­da­men­tal, foun­da­tion­al technology—because I was always inter­est­ed in where this tech­nol­o­gy touch­es real people’s lives.”

Lad­er felt she found this inter­sec­tion at Uniswap, which, after near­ly six years at Black­Rock, she joined in June 2021.

Some might view this move—away from the sta­bil­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al finance and into very untra­di­tion­al finance—as a leap of faith. Not Lad­er, who said it would’ve been “riski­er” to stay put.

“One of the things I love about DeFi is that the tech­nol­o­gy has the poten­tial to remake finan­cial ser­vices, which means you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change where points of influ­ence are. You have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change and think dif­fer­ent­ly about who you’re serv­ing,” she said. “Most of today’s finan­cial ser­vices have been designed by a some­what homo­ge­neous group of people.”

Obvi­ous­ly, DeFi is far from per­fect, with count­less issues sur­round­ing crime, among oth­er issues. But Lad­er sees poten­tial in what the future of “safe and secure DeFi” may bring as it evolves, men­tion­ing the technology’s trans­paren­cy and the pos­si­bil­i­ty for a new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work to come into place. 

“DeFi teams have to pri­or­i­tize secu­ri­ty and user safe­ty to grow,” she said. 

Lad­er also notes that she has seen more Trad­Fi interest—even after the Ter­ra collapse—than ever before, sig­nal­ing some­thing poten­tial­ly pos­i­tive as the cryp­to mar­ket over­all still struggles.

“The clear­ing that we’re going through now is peak­ing the inter­est of peo­ple in Trad­Fi and in finance,” she said. “We’ve had a bunch of peo­ple reach out to us who just want to see how this works.”