2 days ago Uniswap, the most popular decentralized exchange platform, achieved a remarkable record by surpassing 200 million unique cumulative transactions.
The protocol thus establishes its dominance in the DEX sector, where it handles more than half of the volume recorded in DeFi.
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Summary
Uniswap surpasses the 200 million cumulative transactions threshold
Uniswap, the most well-known decentralized marketplace among DeFi enthusiasts, has surpassed the number of 200 million unique cumulative transactions recorded as of 2018.
The announcement came from the official Twitter profile of Uniswap Labs, which publicly bragged about the achievement.
The protocol in its early years had a hard time emerging, considering that decentralized finance began to take hold in late 2020.
Indeed, Uniswap’s numbers became significant at that time, when the culture of trading on DEXs was spreading among the enthusiastic crypto communities.
Consider that in June 2018 the total value of DeFi was only $20,000, while by December 2020 the figure had reached $15 billion.
During its long journey, the platform has launched two additional versions (v2 and v3) that have served to improve the product and user experience to attract an ever-increasing number of users.
Looking at the data from Dune Analytics, we can see how on a monthly basis the trend of transactions on Uniswap has always been on the rise (with the exception of the current month that just started).
From April until June of this year, every month the 10 million transactions registered on the platform has been exceeded: truly incredible!
Although the number of transactions is definitely growing month after month, we cannot say the same for the total value locked (TVL) within the platform, which has declined by about 60% since November 2021.
Specifically, this value had reached the $10 billion mark on 14 November 2021, while today it sees allocations at $3.99 billion.
This is physiological and in line with the decrease in the entire decentralized finance sector that occurred during 2022.
The figures in the current year are slightly recovering but still far from returning to the period of maximum expansion.
Uniswap’s dominance in the DEX market.
Uniswap represents the most important DEX in the entire decentralized market, with numbers that make major competitors envious.
In the past 7 days, the protocol has recorded a volume of $8.2 billion, which is more than double that of PancakeSwap, the second best-known DEX among the crypto community.
In this regard, taking as a reference the weekly data offered by Dune Analytics, we see how Uniswap handled more than half of all transactions conducted on decentralized exchanges.
The other platforms that compete with unicorn are PancakeSwap, Balancer, Curve, DODO, QuickSwap, Maverick, and SushiSwap.
All of the other exchange protocols that we have not mentioned, but which nonetheless help to create a vast ecosystem of applications, have recorded volumes of less than $100 million in the last week.
Even considering historical data, and not trivially weekly data, Uniswap’s hegemony remains undisputed with market shares always above 50%. You can learn more about this in the following dashboard.
The platform, having supported such a large amount of transactions and volume, got the gain it deserves, recording a truly impressive number of fees, amounting to about $2.8 billion.Â
The most profitable month ever was May 2021, where the DEX earned $251 million in fees. The worst month, following the bull run of 2021, was December 2022 with only $25 million.
Dividing the data by the blockchain to which it belongs, we can see that the majority of fees were paid on Ethereum, while a small fraction were paid on Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism.Â
By contrast, a totally insignificant number was reported on the Binance Smart Chain, where PancakeSwap reigns supreme, and on Celo.
Analysis of the UNI token
While the Uniswap platform continues to grow and set a record for the number of cumulative transactions made, the UNI token suffers from the fluctuating conditions of the crypto market.
The cryptocurrency unfortunately has little utility, predominantly for what concerns the governance factor without any other attractive mechanisms that could push users in the DeFi world to hold the token.
Indeed, one may very well be a veteran of the Uniswap platform without ever having held the project’s native cryptocurrency.
For this reason and because of the fragility of the altcoin sector, UNI currently marks a drawdown from its all-time high of more than 85%.
From the $45 touched in May 2021, the cryptocurrency has fallen to the current $5.49.
In any case, this does not mean that the coin is now given up for dead: prices have been in lateralization for more than 1 year, in a price action that is boring but could provide some satisfaction in the coming months
On a daily time frame we can take a closer look at the situation: starting at the beginning of the year we have seen an uptrend in the value of the asset, culminating on 20 February with the beginning of a bearish reversal.
After a long period of distribution, prices returned to the upside after touching a local bottom on 10 June, a day when the chart marked a depleted RSI.
Over the past month, the rises have been accompanied by good trading volumes, with Uniswap’s native token holding above the 10-period exponential moving average.
If we do not see a UNI breakdown over the weekend, we could easily start next week with a bullish continuation of the cryptocurrency, which, however, will have to overcome resistance at $7.8 before returning to a clearly bullish trend.
The movements of King Bitcoin and the macroeconomic conditions of the market will play a crucial role in this context: remember that altcoins are always subservient to the price action of BTC, which in turn can be influenced by what happens in the world of traditional finance
