DeFi Trading Protocol Uniswap Surpasses $1 Trillion in Trading Volume
The decentralized trading protocol Uniswap has reached a lifetime cumulative trading volume of $1 trillion, regardless of the current bearish market sentiment.
Uniswap community is celebrating an important milestone as the protocol surpassed a lifetime cumulative trading volume of $1 trillion.
Uniswap, which was launched on the Ethereum mainnet in November 2018, was among the earliest decentralized exchanges (DEX) ever launched. It was set to provide a non-custodial platform in which users can swap, trade, and earn on the blockchain. Now, approximately three and a half years later, the protocol has seen more than a trillion dollars of volume pass through it.
The protocol sees a daily volume of roughly $1.4 billion, which is three times as much as that of its closest competitor, Pancakeswap ($500 million), and nineteen times more than that of the second biggest decentralized exchange on Ethereum, Sushiswap ($71 million). Uniswap’s record high daily volume of $8.8 billion happened on November 10, 2021.
At the moment there is also over $5.9 billion in total value locked (TVL) in Uniswap across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Sushiswap and Balancer currently each have $2.1 billion, Bancor $631 million, and 1inch $10 million. The only protocols to have more value locked are lending protocols such as MakerDAO ($9.7 billion), Curve ($9.1 billion) and Aave ($8.6 billion).
Uniswap’s all-time high TVL $10.5 billion was recorded on December 1, 2021. It was floating in a range between $6 billion and $8 billion in TVL, before the market downturn provoked by the Terra meltdown on May 7.
Regardless of the $1 trillion milestone and TVL, the market capitalization of the Uniswap protocol has been in a steadily declining for over a year. In early May 2021, Uniswap’s fully diluted market cap all-time high stood at $33.3, with its native UNI token reaching $42.33 price. At the time of writing, its fully diluted market cap is at $5.7 billion, and UNI is priced at $5.70.
Uniswap is not alone. The entire DeFi sector has been trading in a bear market since early May 2021 despite maintaining or improving fundamentals. Even top protocols’ tokens have lost over 80% in their value. UNI is currently down 87% from its all-time high.
Regardless of the market downtrend, Uniswap community remains determined. On May 23, the community voted almost unanimously to launch the protocol on two other blockchains, Gnosis Chain and Moonbeam Network.
