Yesterday, Uniswap declared that it had surpassed $1 trillion in accumulated trading volume.
1/ It’s been one hell of a ride 🚀
As of today, the Uniswap Protocol has passed a lifetime cumulative trading volume of $1 Trillion. pic.twitter.com/stFdMDgJPZ
— Uniswap Labs 🦄 (@Uniswap) May 24, 2022
Summary
Uniswap reaches $1 trillion in trading volume
The chart shows, after an initial surge at the beginning of 2021, a strong rise between April and May 2021, followed by a period of more steady growth, and a second rise between October and November of the same year.
Despite the bear market, the cumulative trading volume continued to grow significantly during 2022.
The $500 billion mark was exceeded in October 2021, so in just seven months there was a doubling.
Uniswap is the world’s most important DEX based on Ethereum and has now far outpaced the world’s second-largest DEX by daily trading volume, Pancake Swap on BNB Chain. It alone accounts for 35% of all daily trading volumes worldwide on all DEXs.
Uniswap also shared other charts, revealing in particular the growth in the number of users and dominance in the decentralized exchange sector.
To date, in the three years of its existence, there have been 3.9 million active Ethereum addresses on Uniswap, a very high number for a DEX, but significantly lower than the number of users who commonly frequent the world’s largest centralized exchanges.
In light of this data, it is reasonable to say that DEXs are becoming increasingly successful, although they are still a long way behind the numbers of CEXs. However, it is worth remembering that DEXs do not support fiat currencies, but at most stablecoins pegged to the value of fiat currencies.
Uniswap now also supports three Layer-2s on Ethereum: Polygon, Optimism and Arbitrum. This has certainly helped its expansion, in particular by reducing transaction fees. In the future, it will also add support for two EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible chains, namely Gnosis Chain and Moonbeam Network based on Polkadot.
Uniswap makes its way among top DeFi platforms
It should be noted that Uniswap’s TVL is close to $6 billion, placing the DEX in fifth place overall among DeFi protocols for Total Value Locked, behind only MakerDAO, Curve, Aave and Lido.
By May 2021, Uniswap‘s TVL had reached $10 billion, thanks mainly to the increase in value of ETH, a share that was then touched again in November. The current value is still far higher than any prior to April 2021.
By contrast, things do not seem to be going so well for the value of UNI, Uniswap’s governance token.
Its price is currently as much as 88% lower than it was in May 2021, probably because there was a veritable speculative bubble on the asset then.
Over the past seven days, its price has remained relatively stable, but is still 37% lower than it was a month ago and 77% lower than it was twelve months ago.
UNI’s price curve reveals how it eventually returned to not much higher than it was when it was launched on the crypto markets in September 2020.
