Alabama signs SB277 into law, giving DAOs legal status in the state as of October 1

The governor of the state of Alabama signed SB277 into law, giving decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) legal status in the Yellowhammer State from October 1, 2026. That announcement comes as two of the most prominent voices in crypto debate what it takes to be called a DeFi project these days, and to be governed by DAOs, after the $285 million exploit that rocked Drift Protocol.

The debate between Uniswap’s founder Hayden Adams and Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly “Toly” Yakovenko flips the script on the stereotype of the historical inability of lawmakers to agree on anything, as Alabama legislators found common ground to push through the DAO bill sponsored by Republican Senator Lance Bell, while Adams and Toly publicly disagreed on decentralization ideals and standards. 

Why are Uniswap and Solana Labs founders arguing on X?

Uniswap’s Hayden Adams triggered a pointed response from Solana Labs’ Toly when he responded to an analysis of the Drift Protocol $285 million exploit by Omer Goldberg, the founder of Chaos Labs

As reported by Cryptopolitan, hackers gained access to Drift Protocol because its governance process appeared to prioritize speed at the expense of certain failsafe mechanisms, including a timelock . 

Omer’s analysis reported the same thing, noting that the Drift Protocol exploiter could create a new collateral market, instruct the oracle to an account they control, and turn off withdrawal guards on major vaults in a single transaction after gaining admin key access. 

Despite not “grave dancing” according to Adams, he used the Drift exploit as an opportunity to call to draw the line between CeFi and DeFi, “otherwise DeFi means nothing, and its brand is destroyed.”

Toly promptly replied with screengrabs from a ChatGPT conversation to dispute Adam’s claims that “no admin key can drain any version of Uniswap for a reason.” 

Anatoly’s pushback was based on the argument that “Technically, any fork of Uniswap that is on any L2 has an admin key that can drain the Uniswap contract because of the L2 emergency upgrade path, since it can override the state of that contract in the upgrade.”

Adams fought back against Toly’s implication of Uniswap’s centralization due to a 15-of-18-signer requirement, insisting that “15 keys across 3 independent orgs is way more decentralized than 1.” 

The back-and-forth between the cofounders only ended after Adams clarified that the “Uniswap AMM smart contracts are immutable and don’t have admin keys.” The Uniswap founder then doubled down on the fact that the DEX’s smart contracts have the
“exact level of decentralization on the chain they live on,” referring to the Ethereum blockchain, which is often referred to as the gold standard in DeFi quarters. 

The Solana Labs co-founder is not the only one to question Uniswap’s decentralization lately. 

Cryptopolitan reported on a European Central Bank (ECB) paper published in March 2026 based on data collected between two periods in November 2022 and May 2023, where the apex bank questioned the decentralization level of Uniswap, along with others such as MakerDAO and Aave, due to the concentration of protocol-level control among small groups.  

Alabama moves ahead with DAO legislation

While stakeholders and the ECB struggle to reach a common definition of DeFi and DAOs, the state of Alabama has cleared the hurdle to fully recognize DAOs as legal entities under state law, joining Wyoming as the only US state to have reached that stage. 

The Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association Law approved by the state senate defines a “decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association or nonprofit association” as an unincorporated nonprofit association that has at least 100 members aligned in digital activity under an agreement (written or inferred from conduct) for a common nonprofit purpose, “including, but not limited to, administering the affairs of a distrubted ledger technology or network of smart contracts”. 

The full text of the Alabama DAO law allows DAOs to “pay reasonable compensation or reimburse reasonable expenses to its members, administrators, and persons outside of the nonprofit association for services rendered.”

It also allows DAOs to offer membership and administrative perks, buy back tokens, and distribute assets in the event of a project wind-down.

If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.