Oku Newsletter

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - October ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:34:10 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In October 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $48.24 billion in monthly volume (+20.2%) across $5.73 billion in liquidity (+2.8%), earning market makers $80.30 million in fees (+30.1%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $24.83 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Each of the major deployments except for Arbitrum saw increases in volume and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume (-3.9%) and fees (-3.8%) over competing DEX protocols, with a slight increase in liquidity (+0.4%).

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and fees fell this month, while their liquidity share rose slightly for the second consecutive month.

This month, the recent Uniswap v3 deployments on Gnosis and BOB were added to the report.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

Uniswap protocol volume bounced back this month, rising 20.2% to $48.24 billion.

(Only chains with visible volume figures are displayed)

There were significant changes in volume this month across the different Uniswap v3 deployments. Many of the major chains, Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, Base, and BNB Chain, experienced significant growth, with the lowest performer being Ethereum, which had a 19.6% monthly growth rate. The exception was Arbitrum, which dropped its monthly volume by 23.3%, losing 6.6% of its market share.

Uniswap v2 was the biggest winner this month, growing its volume by 54.8% and its market share by 5.2%. Uniswap v2 now accounts for nearly a quarter of all Uniswap protocol volume. Typically, Uniswap v2 is home to high-risk assets such as memecoins. This extreme growth may highlight a shift towards more speculative trading on Ethereum.

Liquidity

After a significant falloff in August, Uniswap protocol liquidity has been growing for two consecutive months to $5.73 billion. Liquidity figures are still substantially below the Q2 2024 values but could return to the $6 billion to $7 billion range in the coming months as markets heat up.

(Only chains with visible liquidity figures are displayed)

Liquidity remained relatively stable across all major Uniswap v3 deployments except Polygon, which experienced a shocking 31.1% increase in October. Polygon’s notable liquidity growth was likely influenced by Polymarket capturing millions of eyeballs and billions in transaction volume surrounding the US presidential election.

Many of the smaller Uniswap v3 deployments struggled with liquidity this month, with Rootstock, Filecoin, Taiko, Sei, and Mantle all marking 50%+ drawdowns in TVL.

Fees

In October, protocol fees rose to levels not seen since June 2024. The 30.1% increase was primarily fuelled by Uniswap v2, which experienced a 54.8% increase in fees distributed this month.

(Only chains with visible fee figures are displayed)

October was a good month for Uniswap v3 liquidity providers on Polygon zkEVM (+134.8%) and Base (+142.1%), with both chains more than doubling their monthly fees collected. With this move, Base surpassed Arbitrum as the chain with the second most fee distribution to liquidity providers, following only Ethereum.

Uniswap v2 grew its fee figures by 54.8% to $33.97 million this month and is close to flipping Uniswap v3 on Ethereum in fee market share.

Market Share

This section highlights Uniswap Protocol's success against leading competitors. To be considered a competitor, the protocol must be a spot DEX with at least one deployment on a chain alongside Uniswap v3. To filter out the data, the spot DEX must have a consistent monthly volume of $1 billion.

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Aerodrome meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s volume dominance declined once again in October. Although both Uniswap and the competitor set grew their volume this month, Uniswap’s was less significant (20.2% vs 40.1%).

Every DEX in the competitor set welcomed more volume in October than in September. The top performer was Aerodrome, growing their monthly volume by 83.2% to $16.52 billion. This move led the DEX to capture 4.6% more market share directly from the Uniswap protocol. The worst performer was TraderJoe, who kept volume figures flat in an active month for onchain trading.

Liquidity

The Uniswap protocol maintained its 48.6% share of DEX liquidity in October, with a slight increase in TVL that matches the competitor set.

Once again in October, Aerodrome was the biggest destination for new liquidity, growing a shocking 22.8% to $1.4 billion in protocol TVL. TraderJoe was the other home for new liquidity, with TVL growing 8.3% this month despite being the only DEX without a notable rise in volume.

Curve (-8.7%) and Quickswap (-8.6%) saw the largest outflows this month. With Uniswap v3 on Polygon being a prominent destination for new liquidity in October, it’s safe to say that several Quickswap liquidity providers moved funds to the leading DEX protocol.

Fees

Both Uniswap and the competitor set experienced a large fee increase this month. Unfortunately for the leading protocol, the competitor set increased fees by 52.8%, shrinking Uniswap’s dominance by 3.5% on the month.

TraderJoe returned 176.1% more fees to liquidity providers in October than in September despite maintaining extremely similar volume figures. Pancakeswap and Aerodrome each grew their collected fees by 50%, picking up 3.8% of the market share from Uniswap this month.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

This section explores the changes in Uniswap Protocol activity between Layer 1 and Layer 2 deployments as a percentage of total activity. Only Uniswap v2 and v3 on Ethereum are counted as Layer 1 deployments, with Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, zkSync, Scroll, Rootstock, Linea, Blast, Manta, Boba, Taiko, Sei, Mantle, Polygon zkEVM, Lisk and Moonbeam making up the Layer 2 grouping.

Volume

Layer 2’s volume share dropped to a yearly low in October, now only making up 23.1% of all protocol trading. Arbitrum’s October decline, alongside Uniswap v2’s growth, are the big contributors to this change.

Liquidity

Layer 2’s liquidity share grew by 0.4% in October, again highlighting that liquidity doesn’t directly follow volume.

Fees

Following volume, Layer 2’s share of fees fell by 1.2% to just 13.5% of the total.

Since beginning this report in January 2024, October is the first month where Layer 2’s have a higher share of liquidity than fees, highlighting that Layer 1 providers are now earning more yield per dollar in the protocol.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Protocol efficiency was relatively stable in October, with subtle increases thanks to a rise in onchain volume. Camelot’s concentrated liquidity protocol still provides the most volume per dollar in TVL, now facilitating $31.97 in volume per dollar.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume, determining the fee rate per dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. The remainder of the fee rates remained relatively flat, with a stunning increase from TraderJoe. As mentioned earlier in the report, TraderJoe fees grew over 176.1% despite no changes in volume. Uniswap v3, Pancakeswap, and TraderJoe now have similar average fee rates, between 0.12% and 0.16%.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Liquidity providers across the major DEXs performed much better in October than in September. Without surprise, TraderJoe skyrocketed from offering 1% per month in average yield to 2.6%. Pancakeswap also crossed the 2% monthly yield threshold, with Uniswap v2 not far behind at 1.9%.

Uniswap v3, Camelot, and Quickswap remained consistent at just over 1% on the month.

UNI Token

The Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (+9.93%), had a great month in October, outperforming ETH (+2.56%), but falling short against the industry’s largest asset, BTC (+14.27%).

Uniswap’s UNI token was the best performer this month, closely seconded by Aerodrome’s AERO token (+8.91%). October marks the second consecutive month where the top performing tokens are AERO and UNI.

Each other token in the competitor set was down in October despite BTC’s substantial rise.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the November report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - September ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 16:00:44 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In September 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $40.18 billion in monthly volume (-27.4%) across $5.57 billion in liquidity (+7.5%), earning market makers $61.72 million in fees (-11.1%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $20.77 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Each of the major deployments experienced significant decreases in volume and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume (-2.9%) and liquidity (-1.7%) over competing DEX protocols, with a slight increase in fees (+0.4%).

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and fees fell this month, while their liquidity share rose for the first time since May 2024.

This month, the recent Uniswap v3 deployments on Polygon zkEVM and Lisk were added to the report.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

Uniswap protocol volume dropped significantly this month, down 27.4% to $40.18 billion. This is the lowest monthly volume since October 2023.

Volume declines were felt across the board in September, with each of the five largest deployments experiencing 30%+ drawdowns. The Uniswap v3 deployment on Sei was the only one to grow its volume, increasing 44.5% from $78 million to $113 million. Surprisingly, Uniswap v2 managed to maintain its volume, only falling 0.6% on the month. In the past, volume declines were felt more by the storied protocol, given its use for memecoins and other longtail assets.

With all major v3 deployments seeing declines, Uniswap v2 grew its protocol market share by 4.9%, now accounting for 18.1% of all volume.

Liquidity

After a large falloff in August, Uniswap protocol liquidity bounced back in September, growing 7.5% to $5.57 billion across all deployments. September is the first month with liquidity growth since May of this year.

The largest deployments all experienced an increase in liquidity, with the exception of Arbitrum (-9.0%). Uniswap v3 on Base had the largest liquidity inflow by a large margin, more than doubling its TVL to $265.00 million. Taiko marked the largest outflows, with liquidity falling 81.5% as UNI and TAIKO incentives expired on the chain.

Base also experienced the largest growth in liquidity market share at 2.3%, half of which came directly from Uniswap v2. The CPAMM protocol experienced liquidity growth this month, but not enough to keep up with the v3 deployments.

Fees

Protocol fees fell in September, alongside volume decreases, with the protocol paying the lowest amount to liquidity providers so far in 2024.

As expected, fees across the multichain deployments followed the volume figures. The exception to the rule is Uniswap v3 on Ethereum, which only saw a fee decline of 9.7% despite a 30.6% decrease in volume, highlighting that volume shifted slightly towards higher fee-tier pools in September.

Uniswap v2 grew its fee market share by another 3.8%, now accounting for over a third of the Uniswap protocol’s total fee distribution.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Aerodrome meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s volume dominance declined once again in September. Although both Uniswap and the competitor set experienced fall-offs, Uniswap’s was much larger (27.4% vs 18.5%).

Every DEX in the competitor set experienced a volume fall-off in September amidst the poor market conditions. The best performer was Pancakeswap, only marking a 7.8% decline in volume, growing its share of the pie by 3.7%. The worst performer was Camelot, losing $1.95 billion in monthly volume, a shocking 42.4% fall-off.

Liquidity

After dipping below 50% of liquidity last month for the first time in 2024, the Uniswap protocol continued to lose market share against the competitor set. Although TVL increased, TVL on competing DEXs increased faster.

Many of the major DEXs saw growth in liquidity figures, but Aerodrome was by far the biggest destination for new positions. Aerodrome TVL nearly doubled from $581m in August to $1.14 billion in September. The Base DEX now accounts for nearly 10% of all liquidity in the competitor set.

Despite increasing liquidity by 7.5% in September, the Uniswap protocol lost 1.7% of its market share, with market share from every DEX flowing to Aerodrome.

Fees

Fees fell across the board in September, leading the Uniswap protocol to maintain its market share in fee distribution at 63.4%.

With large volume drop-offs in September, only Uniswap and Pancakeswap were able to weather the storm for their liquidity providers, maintaining a similar amount of fee collection and distribution at -11.1% and -2.8% respectively. Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, and Balancer each distributed less than 70% of the prior month’s fees.

From a market share perspective, Pancakeswap was the biggest winner growing its share of fees by 2.2% to 24.5% - nearly a quarter of all fees in the competitor set.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Layer 2’s volume share fell slightly in September, now at 28.4% of the total. This is the lowest level since February of 2024.

Liquidity

Layer 2’s liquidity share grew slightly in September, further highlighting that liquidity doesn’t directly follow volume.

Fees

Layer 2’s share of fees tumbled by 4.6% in September, implying that higher fee-tier volume occurred on Layer 1 in September.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Protocol efficiency fell across the board in August, with liquidity rising and volume falling across most protocols. In percentage terms, Aerodrome had the biggest falloff this month, as liquidity increased 95.8% and volume fell 9.8%. Camelot’s concentrated liquidity protocol still facilitates the most volume per dollar in TVL.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume, determining the fee rate per dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. The remainder of the fee rates remained relatively flat, with a slight bump in Uniswap v3 fee rates, now at 0.12% across all pools.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Liquidity providers across the major DEXs performed much worse in September then they did in August. Not only was there a decline in fee revenue, but liquidity increased across the board. This month, Aerodrome liquidity providers earned a 0.5% return on average, down significantly from August’s 1.3%. Most of the major DEXs offered an average return of between 0.9% and 0.14%, with the exceptions being Curve and Balancer as usual.

UNI Token

The Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (+22.1%) had a great month in September, outperforming ETH (+0.9%) and the industry’s largest asset, BTC (+6.1%).

Uniswap’s UNI token was the second-best performer this month, with only Aerodrome’s AERO token (+91.6%) performing better. Interestingly, last month, the three worst performers were AERO, BAL, and UNI - each marking a big comeback in September.

September token performance was certainly more correlated to the protocol’s TVL than their volume figures.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the October report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - August ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:23:18 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In August 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $55.23 billion in monthly volume (-6.4%) across $5.18 billion in liquidity (-18.6%), earning market makers $69.4 million in fees (-9.2%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $29.91 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Of the major deployments, Polygon held up best in volume, liquidity, and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume (-3.8%), liquidity (-2.2%), and fees (-1.8%) over competing DEX protocols.

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and liquidity remained flat at 31.4% and 13.3%, respectively, while their fee share fell 3% month-over-month to 19.4%

This month, the recent Uniswap v3 deployment on Mantle was added to the report.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

Uniswap protocol volume has been consistent over the past three months at just under $60 billion. In August, this figure fell slightly to $55.23 billion.

In August, there were some changes in volume composition across the leading Uniswap v3 deployments. Base’s market share (-1.7%) went to Arbitrum (+1.8%), and Ethereum’s market share (-1%) was directed towards Uniswap v2 (+0.5%) and Polygon (+0.6). Scroll, Blast, and Linea each experienced large volume declines with at least a 60% drop from July. Filecoin and Boba network grew their volumes by 128.1% and 241.2% respectively.

Liquidity

Uniswap protocol liquidity experienced large declines in August, down 18.6% month-over-month to the lowest levels seen since January. With ETH down 24.2% in the month, this fall may be primarily attributed to price declines rather than the closing of positions in the protocol.

This month, liquidity fell significantly across all the major deployments except for Polygon and BNB Chain, where there wasn’t significant growth either. Base (-60.5%) and Manta (-85.4%) were the biggest losers. Base liquidity has been falling lately due to memecoin collapse and a shift towards Aerodrome’s Uniswap v3 fork. Taiko doubled its TVL in August.

Relatively, Ethereum grew its market share despite losing 15.1% of its TVL, and Base lost 2.6% of its market share, cutting its prominence in half.

Fees

Protocol fees fell slightly in August, alongside volume decreases, with the protocol paying the lowest amount to liquidity providers so far in 2024.

As expected, fee figures across the multichain deployments followed the volume figures. Interestingly, Base lost twice as much fee market share (-3.4%) as they did volume market share (-1.7%), signifying that high-fee tier volume fell off a cliff in August.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Aerodrome meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s market dominance fell 3.8% to 53.6% in August. Uniswap protocol volume declined, and the competitor set increased volume this month.

Camelot (+17.1%), TraderJoe (+19.7%), Quickswap (+18.7), and Aerodrome (+35.7) were the big winners in August, all increasing their volume figures by 17% or more - with Aerodrome doing twice that. There has been a clear volume shift from Uniswap v3 on Base to Aerodrome.

The Uniswap protocol was the worst performer this month, losing 3.8% of its market share. Despite the poor performance, the protocol maintains over a 50% share in spot DEX volume amongst its competitors.

Liquidity

For the first time in 2024, the Uniswap protocols liquidity share dipped below 50%, now sitting at 49.9% of the total.

This month, each protocol except TraderJoe had a fall in TVL, measured in dollars. As mentioned earlier in the report, this can be primarily attributed to the decline in prices throughout the ecosystem.

The Uniswap protocol lost more liquidity than the rest, with market share flowing from Uniswap (-2.2%) primarily to Pancakeswap (+1%) and Curve (+0.6%).

Fees

Despite the liquidity parity and large decline in volume share, the Uniswap protocol remains king in fee distribution, still paying 62.9% of all fees to liquidity providers.

TraderJoe followed its best month of the year in July with another outstanding fee performance in August, growing 21.5%. Quickswap was the only other DEX to generate similar growth at 23.5% month-over-month. Despite seeing volume growth, Curve declined its fees generated by 26.8% in August, being the only DEX with double-digit fee declines. The Uniswap protocol was the next worst performer, with fees falling 9.2%.

Relatively, the Uniswap protocol was by far the biggest disappointment this month, losing 1.8% of its market share.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Layer 2’s volume share remains flat from March to August at roughly 31.% of the total.

Liquidity

Layer 2’s liquidity share remained flat once again in August. Without large swings in volume, we can expect this chart to stay steady as liquidity is sticky, especially in periods of flat volume metrics across Ethereum and Layer 2s.

Fees

Layer 2’s fee share fell slightly in August, primarily driven by Base’s $2.9m decline in fee generation this month.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Protocol efficiency rose across the board in August, with liquidity falling and volume remaining flat across most protocols. Camelot experienced the biggest uptick this month, with a 17.1% rise in volume and a 7.1% decline in liquidity. Camelot and TraderJoe are in a category of their own, facilitating $30+ of volume per dollar of liquidity.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume, determining the fee rate per dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. The remainder of the fee rates remained relatively flat, with Uniswap v3 staying consistent for the last few months at 0.1% on average across all pools.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Liquidity providers across the major DEXs had great earnings in August, with seven of the nine monitored DEXs offering over 1% in yield this month. Without surprise, Curve and Balancer, primarily known for their stable/stable pairs have been consistently offering a lower rate of return for their low-risk liquidity providers.

UNI Token

After a poor month in July, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (-21.7%), performed similarly to ETH (-24.2%) and worse than the industry’s largest asset, BTC (-12.2%).

Uniswap’s UNI token was one of the worst performers this month, with only Balancer BAL (-25.6%) and Aerodrome’s AERO (-33.4%) coming in below. The best DEX token to hold in August was Camelot’s GRAIL, the only one to come out positive at +1.4%.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the September report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - July ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 12:52:35 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In July 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $59.02 billion in monthly volume (+7.7%) across $6.37 billion in liquidity (-2.1%), earning market makers $76.43 million in fees (-15.1%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $32.57 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Moonbeam had the highest month-over-month growth in volume and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume (-1.8%), liquidity (-0.6%), and fees (-2.8%) over competing DEX protocols.

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and liquidity remained flat at 31.0% and 14.6%, respectively, while their fee share grew for the second consecutive month to 22.7%.

This month, the recent Uniswap v3 deployments on Taiko and Sei were added to the report. Uniswap competitor Maverick was replaced by Aerodrome, a much larger protocol as of late.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

In July, Uniswap protocol volume bounced back slightly after three declining months, rising to $59.02 billion (+7.7%).

July brought high volatility to the largest Uniswap deployments, with only Uniswap v3 Optimism remaining relatively stable month-over-month (-1.7%). Uniswap v2 volume fell 29.7% to $7.51 billion, with Base and BNB Chain marking similar falls. The falls were more than covered by the volume growth on Ethereum’s Uniswap v3 deployment (+21.2%), Polygon (+19.38%), and Arbitrum (+22.85). The launch of UNI incentives on Moonboom welcomed a 606.4% increase in volume, as expected.

Relatively, we see that Uniswap v2’s market share went directly to Uniswap v3 on Ethereum, and Base’s market share was transferred to Arbitrum.

Liquidity

Uniswap protocol liquidity fell slightly to $6.37 billion. Since February, protocol liquidity has fluctuated between $6 billion and $7.2 billion.

This month, liquidity remained relatively stable on the larger protocol deployments but fluctuated on the newer v3 releases. Scroll (-59.97), Blast (-78.2%), and Linea (-71.3%) all took large hits as the UNI liquidity incentives expired. Manta, Moonbeam, and zkSync each grew their liquidity by roughly 20%, helping offset the loss.

As usual there was a very small shift in market share across the board, highlighting the stickiness of liquidity, especially on larger deployments.

Fees

Protocol fees fell once again in July (-15.1%) despite the increase in volume (+7.7%). The fall in Uniswap v2 volume is a big contributor to this decline, as volume appears to be flowing away from the high 0.3% fee-tier pools and towards the lower 0.01% and 0.05% pools offered in Uniswap v3.

Polygon, Arbitrum experienced healthy fee growth in July. As expected, Uniswap v2 fees fell linearly alongside the volume decline, marking a 6.1% fall in market share and a 29.71% fall in fees this month. Moonbeam fees shot up by 447.4% thanks to the UNI incentives. Manta also benefited from the DAO initiative, growing fees by 67.1%.

Uniswap v3 fees on Ethereum fell 8.8% despite a 21.5% rise in volume, indicating that the average fee per trade fell a shocking 25%.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Aerodrome meet this criterion.

This month, Maverick was removed from the report for failing to capture $1 billion in volume for three consecutive months amidst Aerodrome’s rise.

Volume

Despite increasing protocol volume, Uniswap’s market dominance fell 1.8% to 57.7% in July.

Excluding Curve (-14.4%) and Balancer (-20%), the major DEXs all marked volume increases in July. The biggest winners were Camelot and Traderjoe, who both multiplied their monthly volume threefold, growing their market share by 2% each.

Aerodrome’s volume grew 26.8% in July, while Uniswap v3 on Base saw a 17.4% decrease in the metric. We’ll be monitoring as the two largest DEXs on Base continue to fight for market share.

Liquidity

The Uniswap protocol’s liquidity dominance fell slightly to 52.7% in July. Competitors managed to keep liquidity stable on net, while Uniswap liquidity fell.

This month, the DEX set was composed of four protocols with liquidity growth and four with declining TVL. The protocols that grew the most were TraderJoe with a 17.5% increase in TVL, and Aerodrome with an 11.4% increase.

Fees

Once again this month, the Uniswap Protocol remains the primary hub for fee distribution to liquidity providers. Although the protocol lost a 2.8% market share in July, Uniswap still pays 64.7% of the fees in the competitor set.

TraderJoe’s best month of the year extended to fees generated as well, growing 43.1% month over month. Camelot, also experiencing a 208% increase in volume, grew its fees by 9.6% in July. The two largest protocols, Uniswap and Pancakeswap, both saw a decline in fees generated despite volume growth, highlighting the shift towards lower fee-tier pools on Ethereum and BNB Chain.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Layer 2’s volume share remains flat from March to July at roughly 31% of the total.

Liquidity

Layer 2’s liquidity share remained flat once again in July.

Fees

Layer 2’s share of fees grew by 2.4% in July, continuing the trend back toward the April highs of 29.2%. This shift was primarily driven by the decline of Uniswap v2 fees on Ethereum as opposed to an increase in fees on Layer 2.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

While protocol efficiency remained flat across most protocols in July, the outliers, Camelot and TraderJoe, experienced a massive uptick, from roughly $10 in volume per dollar of liquidity to $27 and $35 per. The remaining DEXs are separated into two tiers at $10 per and $4 per.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume, determining the fee rate per dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. Uniswap v3’s fee rate decreased, as noticed earlier in the report. Most of the field saw fee rates fall, indicating a shift towards stable pools and away from speculative assets. The exceptions are Balancer and Curve, who each experienced a slight increase.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

In July, protocol yield remained relatively consistent amongst all DEXs, with the exception of Uniswap v2, which became a significantly worse destination for liquidity providers. Uniswap v3 remains one of the best options, returning a yield of 1.3% in July, similar to Pancakswap, Camelot, and TraderJoe. Curve and Balancer continue to offer the lowest return as their providers deposit into low-volatility pools.

UNI Token

In July, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (-22.7%), performed terribly against ETH (-6.9%) and the industry’s largest asset, BTC (+3.9%).

After two months of being the best-performing DEX token in the competitor set, the UNI token performed the worst. The biggest winner was Aerodrome’s AERO token which appreciated 27.2% in the month of July.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the August report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - June ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 20:03:22 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In June 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $54.66 billion in monthly volume (-26%) across $6.5 billion in liquidity (-9.6%), earning market makers $89.94 million in fees (-25.5%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $26.74 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. zkSync had the highest month-over-month growth in volume, liquidity, and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume (-4.3%), liquidity (-0.6%), and fees (-1.8%) over competing DEX protocols.

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and liquidity remained flat at 30.4% and 14.6% respectively, while their fee share grew to 19.9%.

This month, the recent Uniswap v3 deployment on Manta was added to the report.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

In June, the Uniswap protocol experienced its third consecutive monthly fall, down to $54.66 billion (-26%).

The five largest Uniswap v3 deployments in May, Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base, all experienced substantial falls in volume in June, with the best performer being Ethereum, with a shocking 22.1% decline. Uniswap v3 on Optimism performed the worst, with its monthly volume halving to $1.04 billion in June. The best-performing deployments were zkSync, Moonbeam, and Filecoin, each growing by more than 100% - with zkSync marking an 11000% month-over-month increase.

zkSync’s outstanding growth can be attributed to the ZK token launch, UNI liquidity incentives, and the integration on Uniswap Labs’ frontend, forming a perfect storm for protocol activity.

Relatively, Uniswap v2 experienced the largest decline, losing 3.1% of its market share and $6 billion in monthly volume. Despite the 22.1% decline in volume, Uniswap v3 on Ethereum grew its market share by 2.44%, the best of the bad.

Liquidity

Uniswap protocol liquidity fell to $6.5 billion. Since February, protocol liquidity has fluctuated between $6 billion and $7.2 billion.

This month, every Uniswap deployment saw a decrease in liquidity from May, except for those with active UNI incentives. Moonbeam and zkSync each grew their TVL by 800%+, with the incentives going live in June.

Uniswap v2 liquidity fell over $300 million, marking the biggest loss in market share at nearly 1%. Despite the real loss in TVL, v3 on Ethereum grew its market share by 1.1% to 50.1%, now being the home for over half of all protocol liquidity.

Fees

Protocol fees fell heavily in June (-25.5%) alongside the decrease in volume (-26.0%). Uniswap v2 had previously been holding up the protocol’s fee numbers during the recent drops in volume. This is no longer the case, with Uniswap v2 fees underperforming the other deployments with a 36% loss.

Once again, each Uniswap v3 deployment saw metrics fall except for those with liquidity incentives. Most deployment fees fell proportionate to their volume numbers, marking no significant change in pool participation across fee tiers.

zkSync experienced a 15000% increase in fee revenue, 40% higher than the reported volume increase, likely due to the significant ZK volume occurring in 0.3% and 1% pools.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s volume market dominance fell 4.3% to 62.7% in June.

Amidst the fall off in DeFi activity, the competitor DEX set held up better than the Uniswap Protocol. TraderJoe and Maverick were the exceptions to the rule, with 49.7% and 43.2% declines, respectively. Maverick’s decline can be attributed to the rise of Uniswap v3 on zkSync.

Without a substantial change in volume, Maverick will be removed from the report.

Pancakeswap, Curve, and Balancer held up against the market decline, reclaiming market share from Uniswap.

Liquidity

The Uniswap protocol’s liquidity dominance fell slightly to 55.3% in June.

This is the first monthly fall in Uniswap’s market share since the beginning of this report in January 2024.

This month, every DEX protocol except Curve experienced a fall in liquidity. Curve’s 5.4% growth came with a 2.4% increase in market share over competing protocols. TraderJoe lost half of all protocol liquidity in one month.

Fees

The Uniswap protocol remains the king of fee generation for its liquidity providers, retaining a 70.6% share of fee revenue despite a 1.8% monthly loss in market share.

Every DEX suffered losses in fee collection for liquidity providers this month. Once again, TraderJoe was the worst performer, with a 64.6% fee loss. Pancakeswap held the strongest, growing its share of fees by 3.3% in June.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Layer 2’s volume share remained flat from May to June, as volume declines were steady across the protocol.

Liquidity

After reaching an all-time high last month, Layer 2’s liquidity share remained flat in June. Layer 2 liquidity would need to grow by 36% to match the fee distribution, implying that a portion of liquidity on Layer 1 is stale.

Fees

Layer 2’s share of fees grew by 2.1% in June, trending back toward the April highs of 29.2%.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

For the second month running, most DEXs experienced a decline in protocol efficiency, likely due to liquidity movements taking more time than the declines in volume. Most DEXs (Uniswap v3, Pancakeswap, Camelot, TraderJoe, and Quickswap) supported $10 in trading per dollar in TVL. Uniswap v2, Curve, and Balancer were less efficient, and Maverick once again led the pack at over $34 in volume per dollar in liquidity.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume, determining the fee rate per dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. Uniswap v3’s fee rate increased slightly to 0.13%. Most of the field saw fee rates fall, indicating a shift towards stable pools and away from speculative assets, which is common in times of price decline.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Again, in June, protocol yield fell significantly across the board, with fees falling faster than liquidity. The best destinations for liquidity providers continue to be Uniswap v2, Uniswap v3, and Pancakeswap, all returning roughly 1.4% in June. Balancer and Curve offer the lowest returns at around 0.15%.

UNI Token

In June, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (-8.2%), performed at par with ETH (-9.8%) and the industry’s largest asset, BTC (-7.2%). As expected, UNI experienced more volatility than the major assets.

Again, in June, Uniswap’s UNI token was the best-performing DEX token in the competitor set, only falling 8.2%. The closest competitor was Quickswap’s QUICK token, which fell by 18% this month.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the July report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - May ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 19:33:13 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In May 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $73.96 billion in monthly volume (-4.54%) across $7.19 billion in liquidity (+14.8%), earning market makers $120.82 million in fees (-3.6%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $34.31 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Linea had the highest month-over-month growth in volume and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative increase in volume (+7.6%), liquidity (+3.1%), and fees (+6.2%) over competing DEX protocols.

Layer 2 deployments’ share of volume and fees fell to 30.0% and 17.8% respectively. However, the deployments reached an all-time high in liquidity share, at 14.8%.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

In May, the Uniswap protocol experienced its second consecutive monthly fall, down to $73.96 billion (-4.5%).

Many deployments experienced volatility in their volume figures this month, with Arbitrum, Polygon, and zkSync Era hosting the only deployments with less than a 10% monthly change in volume. Uniswap v2 nearly doubled its monthly volume (+96.5%) alongside Blast (+96.0%) and Scroll (+88.2%). This month's biggest winner was Linea (+254.7%), with the UNI incentives fuelling liquidity growth and downstream volume. Filecoin (-52.4%) and BNB Chain (-45.9%) lost roughly half their April monthly volume.

Relatively, Uniswap v3 grew its market share by 11.6%, now making up roughly a quarter of all Uniswap protocol volume. Uniswap v3 on Ethereum lost 8.2% of its market share, accounting for less than half of protocol volume in May.

Liquidity

Uniswap protocol liquidity reached a yearly high in May, totaling $7.2 billion.

This month, every Uniswap deployment saw an increase in liquidity from April. Blast and Linea had the most significant increases— +224.5% and +171.2%, respectively—largely due to UNI incentives. Base liquidity finally caught up with recent volume flows and nearly doubled to $421.3 million in TVL.

As usual, there were few changes to the liquidity market share. The greatest delta was a 2.32% increase in dominance from Base.

Uniswap v2 and Uniswap v3 on Ethereum hold over 84% of the liquidity.

Fees

Protocol fees fell slightly in May (-3.6%) alongside the decrease in volume (-4.5%). Uniswap v2 deployments helped maintain the protocol’s fee numbers, growing 92.2% with a 20.7% growth in market share.

Multichain fee revenue fluctuated in May due to volume volatility. Base (-60.5%) and Filecoin (-52.4%) liquidity providers lost over half of their fee revenue, while Scroll and Linea providers earned 125.4% and 255.6%, respectively. Regarding market share, these deployments are still a drop in the bucket compared to Uniswap v2’s massive growth mentioned above.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s volume market dominance rose to 67.0% in May, primarily due to the 31.2% fall in volume from the competitor set.

For the second month running, volume fell on every monitored DEX, with every DEX but Uniswap experiencing double-digit declines. Uniswap’s market share grew 7.6%, holding steadier than the pack. Pancakeswap was the biggest loser, with a 4.7% decline in market share down to $19.91 billion in monthly volume.

Liquidity

The Uniswap protocol grew its liquidity dominance to 55.9% in May.

Uniswap’s liquidity market share has grown consistently since January, when it was 43.2% of the total.

Uniswap and Camelot were the main liquidity hubs in May, each growing TVL over 10% and seeing growth in market share. TraderJoe and Pancakeswap experienced outflows of 6.14% and 2.18%, respectively - being the only two DEXs to note a decline in TVL along with the fall in volume this month.

Fees

The Uniswap protocol remains the king of fee generation for its liquidity providers, further expanding its dominance to 72.5% this month. Recently, Uniswap v2 has been a significant contributor with its maintained 0.3% fee, as larger assets see volume in 0.01% and 0.05% pools.

Every DEX except Uniswap and Balancer experienced major fee declines, falling more than 20% each. Balancer and Uniswap held on with 2.5% and 3.6% declines, respectively, increasing their market share.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Layer 2’s share of protocol volume fell slightly from April to May, now sitting at 30% of the total. Although Uniswap v3 on Ethereum experienced a steep decline in volume, Uniswap v2 overperformed. Base, Layer 2’s fastest-growing deployment, experienced a fall-off for the first time this year.

Liquidity

Layer 2 now holds a yearly high of 14.8% of protocol liquidity, fuelled by Base inflows and UNI-incentivized Layer 2 growth from Scroll, Blast, and Linea. This chart is still extremely flat, highlighting the stickiness of liquidity between chains.

Fees

After hitting an all-time high of 29.2% in April, Layer 2’s fee revenue share experienced a steep decline, falling to 17.8% in May.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

This month, each DEX experienced a decline in protocol efficiency caused by steep declines in volume. Most DEXs (Uniswap v3, Pancakeswap, Camelot, TraderJoe, and Quickswap) supported $10 in trading per dollar in TVL. Uniswap v2, Curve, and Balancer were less efficient, and Maverick once again led the pack at over $40 in volume per dollar in liquidity.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume - determining the fee rate on each dollar of volume.

Fee rates across DEX’s remained relatively flat in May, except for Balancer. Although there was volatility, fees collected and volume moved proportionally, not indicating a large shift in fee tiers. Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Protocol yield fell significantly across the board in May, with liquidity rising and fees falling. The exception to the rule was Uniswap v2, where despite the capital inefficiency of constant product AMMs, liquidity providers earned 1.9% this Month - more than any other DEX.

Since the launch of this report, this is the first time that Uniswap v2 has had a higher protocol yield than Uniswap v3, let alone the highest of all the DEXs.

Interestingly, despite Maverick's extremely high volume-to-liquidity ratio, the protocol offers very low yields for liquidity providers.

UNI Token

In May, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (+40.5%), significantly outperformed ETH (+28.5%) and the industry’s largest asset, BTC (+16.2%).

Recent volatility has been primarily driven by speculation around the Uniswap protocol fee switch, which would enable UNI stakers to earn on protocol volume.

Uniswap’s UNI token was the best-performing DEX token in the competitor set, with the second-best being Maverick’s MAV token (+14.8%), still more than 25% away.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the June report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - April ‘24

Oku Newsletter — Mon, 13 May 2024 19:39:02 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In April 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $77.48 billion in monthly volume (-14%) across $6.26 billion in liquidity (-11.9%), earning market makers $125.29 million in fees (-21.3%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $42.3 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Scroll had the highest month-over-month growth in volume and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative increase in volume (+5.9%), liquidity (+1.2%), and fees (+5.1%) over competing DEX protocols.

Layer 2 deployments received 32.7% of all Uniswap volume, and liquidity fell slightly to 12% of the total. However, they generated 29.2% of fees, a new all-time high.

Three Uniswap v3 deployments were added to the report this month: Filecoin, Blast, and Linea.

Multichain

This section highlights activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment and informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and its relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

In April, the Uniswap protocol experienced a slight drop in volume, down to $77.48 billion (-14%), but it still marked the second-highest monthly volume of the year.

Base, Scroll, and Rootstock were the only chains with month-over-month volume growth, with the rest contributing to this month’s fall-off. Scroll was the biggest winner, with a 327.3% rise in volume, and Polygon and Moonbeam were on the other side of the spectrum with nearly 50% declines.

Relatively, Base saw the largest increase in volume share for the third month running, now sitting at 10.2% of total Uniswap protocol volume. Uniswap v3 on Ethereum also grew its market share slightly despite seeing an absolute decline of 10.2%. Uniswap v3 on Ethereum continues to make up around half of all protocol volume.

Liquidity

Uniswap protocol liquidity fell this month for the first time since Sept. 2023, down to $6.26 billion across all chains. Despite the decline, the protocol maintains more liquidity than in February of this year. Since liquidity is dollar-denominated, it’s important to note that declines are not necessarily outflows but can represent deprecation in months with negative price action, like April.

The Rootstock and Scroll deployments were the only ones to see an increase in TVL in April, each marking an increase of over 150%. Moonbeam and Base had the largest falls in liquidity at -61.5% and -38.8% respectively.

As usual, there were few changes to the liquidity market share. The greatest delta was a 1.56% fall in dominance from Base.

Uniswap v2 and Uniswap v3 on Ethereum continue to hold over 87% of the liquidity.

Fees

Protocol fees fell in April (-21.3%), along with the decline in volume (-14%) and liquidity (-11.9%).

The three charts show fees as the protocol metric with the highest volatility, as fees change with volume and the fee tier associated with each pool. In April, the fall in fees outdid the decline in volume, highlighting a move towards lower fee-tier pools.

Intuitively, the three chains with an increase in volume (Base, Rootstock, and Scroll) also paid more fees to liquidity providers this month than in March. In addition, zSync Era saw a slight increase in fees (+11.7%) despite a 16.2% fall in volume this month, displaying a move to higher fee pools on the Layer 2.

Base’s fees grew 32.6% in April alongside a 38.8% fall in liquidity, earning liquidity providers an extra $0.84 per dollar allocated into the protocol in April.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s volume market dominance rose to 59.4% in April, primarily due to the 32.3% fall in volume from the competitor set.

After an outstanding March, volume fell on every monitored DEX. Curve and Balancer were the only two not to see double-digit declines, falling 6.4% and 9.3%, respectively. The worst performer is TraderJoe, which lost 71.1% of its volume in one month.

Liquidity

The Uniswap protocol grew its liquidity dominance to 52.8% in April after accounting for over 50% of competitor-set liquidity for the first time in March.

This month, every DEX competitor in the set experienced a 10%+ TVL drop-off. Uniswap performed the best, only losing 11.9% of its liquidity, whereas the other DEXs all had losses between 13% and 26%.

It’s important to note that liquidity is dollar-denominated, meaning that liquidity losses are not necessarily withdrawals from the protocol, but also due to falling prices, as we saw in April.

Fees

Uniswap’s share of fees generated grew once again in April. The protocol now accounts for nearly double the fees as the sum of its competitors at $125.3 million this month.

Besides Balancer, who marked a 1.3% growth, every leading DEX had a 15%+ decline in fee revenue for liquidity providers. Traderjoe and Maverick took the largest hit at -69.3% and -40.7% respectively.

The market share declines from TraderJoe and Pancakeswap were directly moved to Uniswap, who grew 5.1% this month, even with the absolute decline in fee revenue.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

The split between Layer 1 and Layer 2 volume remained stable from March to April. The Base deployment made up for the decreases in volume elsewhere, highlighting that capital is likely moving from other Layer 2’s to Base and not necessarily from Ethereum.

Liquidity

The liquidity share of Layer 2 deployments fell slightly in April. Since it’s been tracked, we’ve yet to see any meaningful changes in this plot, with the split hovering around 88%/12%.

Fees

Layer 2’s percentage of protocol fees hit another all-time high in April at 29.2%. This run has been primarily fuelled by Base, which has 98.8x the fee revenue it did in January of this year.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Since beginning to track this stat in January, each DEX has had a relatively consistent protocol efficiency, especially Uniswap v2 and v3. This month, the bigger movers were TraderJoe, due to their substantial decline in volume, and Maverick, which varies due to their large multiplier.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume - determining the fee rate on each dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.30%, as expected. Maverick retains the lowest fee rate among the DEXs, and Curve sees a decline in fees, disproportional to the protocol’s slight volume decline.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Every DEX except Camelot and Balancer experienced a decrease in return per dollar deposited this month. The best destination for provisioners in April was Camelot, yielding a 3.5% return in April alone. The worst liquidity return was once again on Balancer, with a 0.1% monthly yield.

UNI Token

In April, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (-42.6%), massively underperformed ETH (-15.3%) and underperformed against the industry’s largest asset, BTC (-16.4%).

Uniswap’s UNI token was the second worst-performing DEX token in the competitor set, with only Maverick’s MAV token coming in below. As a whole, DEX tokens did poorly in April, with Balancer’s BAL token performing the best at -30.1%.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the May report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - March '24

Oku Newsletter — Thu, 11 Apr 2024 17:38:28 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In March 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $90.11 billion in monthly volume (+97.1%) across $7.11 billion in liquidity (+18.9%), earning market makers $159.25 million in fees (+73.3%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $47.1 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Base saw the highest month-over-month growth in volume, liquidity, and fees for the second month running.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume of -5.2% over competing DEX protocols, with a 6.4% relative increase in liquidity and a -7.9% change in fees generated.

Layer 2 deployments received 32.5% of all Uniswap volume, up from 27.4% in January. Layer 2 liquidity increased to its yearly high at 13.7% of the total, generating 28.3% of fees, up significantly from last month.

Multichain

Highlighting activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment, this section informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and the relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

In March, the Uniswap protocol nearly doubled its monthly volume to $90.11 billion, marking a yearly high with no close second.

In March, protocol volume skyrocketed 97.1%, surpassing $90B in volume for the first time since December 2021. Although most of the absolute growth came from Ethereum deployments, every multichain deployment, excluding Scroll and zkSync, saw at least a 100% increase in volume. Base was once again the biggest winner, with a shocking 545% increase in volume.

Relatively, Base also saw the largest increase in volume share, growing its piece of the pie by 3.3%. Uniswap v2 also performed well, marking 1.7% relative growth. Despite growing volume by 72.6%, Uniswap v3 on Ethereum is the biggest loser, marking a 7.4% loss in market share.

Liquidity

Uniswap liquidity surged again this month, marking yet another yearly high of $7.19 billion. From the chart below, we can see that Uniswap v2 and v3 on Ethereum have been consistently growing throughout 2024. Also contributing to the protocol’s liquidity growth is the Base deployment’s exponential liquidity increases since it was launched in August 2023.

There were significant liquidity changes in March. Base marked an unprecedented 645% increase, growing its share to 5% of protocol liquidity. Along with volume falloffs, Scroll had liquidity losses, with 39.6% of TVL flowing out of the deployment.

As incentives continue to be rolled out on newer Uniswap v3 deployments, we’ll monitor liquidity growth across the selected chains.

Fees

March was a good month for Uniswap liquidity providers. Liquidity increased 18.9%, and provisioners accrued a 74.3% increase in fees compared to February. This is not surprising after noting the nearly 100% increase in protocol volume.

With fee increases not quite keeping up with volume, we can conclude that in March, volume moved towards lower fee-tier pools.

Uniswap v3 deployments on Base, BNB Chain, Moonbeam, Polygon, and Rootstock all saw 100%+ increases in fees earned compared to February. Uniswap v2 also grew its fees for liquidity providers by 133% while collecting nearly a quarter of total Uniswap protocol fees.

Interestingly, Polygon's volume grew 129.4% in March while decreasing liquidity by 10.2%. Given the 147.4% monthly increase in fees generated, Polygon liquidity providers are making 26.8% more per dollar deposited than just one month ago.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

During the March madness, Uniswap’s market dominance fell to 53.5%, even while the protocol's monthly trading volume increased by 97.1%. The competitor set grew their volume by a shocking 141.7% this month.

Volume increased on every monitored DEX, with Quickswap, the worst performer, showing a 52% month-over-month increase. TraderJoe (+216.4%) and Pancakeswap (+175.6%) were the clear champions, with large increases in absolute growth and market share. Pancakeswap now accounts for a quarter of the volume of all the listed DEXs.

Liquidity

In March, the Uniswap protocol flipped all competing DEXs in total liquidity for the first time this year, now accounting for 51.6% of the competing DEX set’s liquidity.

Despite across-the-board volume growth, only Uniswap and TraderJoe saw an increase in liquidity. TraderJoe grew liquidity by 58.2%, evidently the liquidity leader in March. Curve liquidity fell 17.6%, marking the largest loss of liquidity in the group.

Generally, liquidity reacts slowly to volume changes. We’ll be looking out for liquidity increases in April to follow March’s volume.

Fees

From a fee perspective, Uniswap and its competitors grew significantly in March. Uniswap retained its title as the top location for fee accumulation but fell -7.9% in market share amidst the competitor’s 147% increase in fees paid.

Competitor fees grew directly alongside the 141.7% increase in volume, displaying very little movement in pool fee tiers.

Every qualifying DEX paid more to liquidity providers in March than in February, with TraderJoe and Pancakswap more than doubling their fees. Following volume, Pancakeswap now accounts for a quarter of all fees paid, growing its market share by 8.2% this month.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

After volume shifted back towards Layer 1 in February, the Uniswap protocol’s Layer 2 deployments grew to a 32.5% share of total volume in March - the second-highest percentage this year.

Unlike the jump in January, this increase is primarily fueled by the recent expansion of the Base and BNB Chain deployments.

Liquidity

March marked a new all-time high for Layer 2’s share of protocol liquidity, which was 13.7% of the total. We’ll likely see this value continue to grow as liquidity adjusts to the volume shifts and stale Layer 1 liquidity gets removed and/or reallocated.

Fees

Layer 2’s percentage of protocol fees hit an all-time high in March at 23.8%. Layer 2 trading has slightly shifted towards higher fee-tier pools, where liquidity providers are now earning 97.3% more per dollar deposited.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Month over month, there is an increase in this metric, with volume outpacing liquidity on every leading DEX.

The competing DEXs form three distinct tiers. Maverick still maintains the highest protocol efficiency by a large margin in a group of its own. Uniswap v3, Camelot, TraderJoe, Pancakeswap, and Quickswap are in the next tier between a 15x and 35x volume-to-liquidity multiplier. The poorest performers in this category are Uniswap v2, Curve, and Balancer, with multipliers less than 5x.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume - determining the fee rate on each dollar of volume.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Every DEX saw an increase in return per dollar deposited this month. The best destination for provisioners in March was TraderJoe, yielding a shocking 5.1% return in March alone. The worst liquidity return was on Balancer, with a 0.1% monthly yield.

UNI Token

In March, the Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI (+1.9%), performed at par against ETH (+2%) and underperformed against the industry’s largest asset, BTC (+11.6%).

Compared to the competition, Uniswap’s UNI token performed in the middle of the pack. CAKE, JOE, and QUICK were the clear winners at 30%+ increases. CAKE and JOE had the largest volume increases this month, but it’s likely QUICK’s price increase had less to do with onchain activity, being the worst-performing DEX in the set.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the April report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - Feb. 24

Oku Newsletter — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:21:11 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In February 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $45.73 billion in monthly volume (-1.9%) across $5.98 billion in liquidity (+37.4%), earning market makers $91.36 million in fees (+29.1%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $27.3 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Base saw the highest month-over-month growth in volume, liquidity, and fees.

This month, the protocol experienced a relative decline in volume of -0.5% over competing DEX protocols, with a 1.4% relative increase in liquidity and a staggering 7.5% increase in fees generated.

Layer 2 deployments received 27.4% of all Uniswap volume, down from 34.7% in January. Layer 2 liquidity remains steady at 11.5% of the total, generating 13.4% of fees, down from last month.

Multichain

Highlighting activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment, this section informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and the relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

Over the past three months, Uniswap protocol volume has remained consistent. It’s interesting to note that volume has not increased alongside recent token prices.

In February, although total protocol volume remained consistent, nine of the twelve chains saw at least a 10% change in volume. Base was the biggest winner, marking a 119% increase, whereas Moonbeam volume fell to negligible values, displaying a 100% decrease.

Uniswap’s largest Layer 2 deployments all underperformed, with Polygon (-10.7%), Arbitrum (-29%), and Optimism (-25.4%) seeing large volume falls compared to January 2024.

Relatively, Uniswap v3 on Ethereum saw the biggest increase in market share, growing 4.1% to a 59.7% share of total protocol volume. Uniswap v2 grew its market share by 2.7%, partially due to the multichain launch this month but likely due to the recent memecoin surge onchain.

Liquidity

Uniswap liquidity surged 34.7% to the highest levels this year, with Uniswap v2 and v3 on Ethereum accounting for the bulk of the growth. As liquidity is denominated in dollars, we can attribute a good portion of the gain to price increases throughout the ecosystem.

Every Uniswap deployment saw liquidity growth in February, with all but Moonbeam seeing 10%+ growth. The biggest increases were Rootstock and Base, with 624% and 314% increases, respectively. Market share amongst chains remained relatively stable, with no changes greater than one percent in either direction.

With incentives going live shortly, thanks to the Uniswap Revitalization and growth proposal, we can expect to see further liquidity growth on newer Uniswap v3 deployments.

Fees

The Uniswap protocol paid liquidity providers more fees in February than any other month in the past year. LPs earned a total of $91.4m in fees, a 29.1% increase from January 2024. With volume remaining stable month over month, we can deduce that volume has moved to higher fee pools, primarily in Uniswap v3 on Ethereum.

Along with volume, Uniswap v3 on Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism underperformed in fees accrued compared to January 2024. Arbitrum specifically saw a $2.8m fall in fees, losing 5.9% in market share.

Month over month, the best performer was Base, which grew from $234k in fees to $2.01m, marking a 759% increase. The Ethereum deployment grew its fees by $18.9m in the month of February, which is more than any other deployment accrued all month.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

Uniswap’s market dominance remained steady from January to February, making up 59% of DEX volume amongst qualifying competitors.

While Uniswap remained steady over the month, other DEX protocols saw large swings in volume. Camelot volume fell 32.7% and lost 1.1% market share. On the other hand, Quickswap grew 51.4%, and Balancer experienced a 28.6% increase.

Liquidity

As mentioned above, the DEX ecosystem as a whole saw large liquidity increases, likely due to prices trending upwards in February. Uniswap outperformed competitors by claiming an extra 1.4% market share, bringing its liquidity share to 45.2%.

Uniswap, Balancer, Curve, and Quickswap all had 30%+ liquidity increases in the short month of February, performing the best in the set. Each DEX did have growth; however, Maverick’s was only 6.7%, underperforming the nearest competitor by a factor of 2.3x.

Fees

From a fee perspective, Uniswap dominated its aggregated competitors in February. As mentioned above, Uniswap distributed $91.4m in fees last month, increasing its share of the fee market to 69.1% from January’s 61.6%.

TraderJoe liquidity providers had the worst month, with fees nearly being cut in half at a 43.5% decrease. Uniswap and Quickswap LPs had the largest increases in fees earned at 29.1% and 48.7% respectively.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

After Layer 2’s best month yet in January, Layer 1 reclaimed a good portion of Uniswap volume, now sitting at 72.6% of the total. As the bull market progresses, we’ll watch how these values shift.

Liquidity

February was another stale month for Uniswap Layer 1 / Layer 2 liquidity, staying at an 88.5%/11.5% split. Regardless of volume and price action, liquidity has yet to migrate. We’ll see how these values shift as Uniswap liquidity incentives go live on Layer 2 deployments.

Fees

Along with volume, Layer 2 fee collection took a relative hit in February 2024. With all the volume flowing through high-fee pools on Ethereum, this divergence was expected. For Layer 2 fee collection to catch up, high-fee pools would need to start processing volume on Layer 2 and not exclusively Uniswap v2 and v3 on Ethereum.

Accounting for differences in liquidity, Layer 2 liquidity providers still earn 1.28x more per dollar deposited.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against those of its competitors. These data sets divide Uniswap v2 and v3 to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

The competing DEXs form three distinct tiers. Maverick still maintains the highest protocol efficiency by a large margin in a group of its own. Uniswap v3, Camelot, TraderJoe, and Quickswap are in the next tier between a 10x and 20x volume-to-liquidity multiplier. The poorest performers in this category are Uniswap v2, Pancakeswap, Curve, and Balancer, with multipliers less than 8x.

Month over month, there is a decrease in this metric, with liquidity values outpacing volume.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume - determining the fee rate on each dollar of volume.

Uniswap v2 maintains the highest fee rate at 0.3%, as expected. Maverick retains the lowest fee rate among the DEXs, likely due to its liquidity incentives, which are not accounted for in fees collected. Uniswap v3 increased its fee rate in February, led by the Ethereum deployment, as mentioned above.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Uniswap v3’s liquidity providers earn an average of 2% per month, around 3x the earnings of v2 depositors. Curve and Balancer providers earn a low 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively, making them the worst liquidity destinations in the group. TraderJoe tops the list at 3.2% monthly returns for providers.

UNI Token

The Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI, performed very well in February against the industry’s benchmark assets, BTC and ETH, even though the benchmarks increased by 45% and 49% in February. UNI nearly doubled its returns at a 93% increase.

The significant leap on the charts came on the day of the Uniswap Foundation’s temperature check, proposing a large-scale upgrade to Uniswap protocol governance by enabling UNI stakers and delegators to earn protocol fees.

Compared to the competition, Uniswap’s UNI token outperformed once again. Most DEX tokens performed similarly to BTC and ETH within the +29.8 to +47.86 range, with Maverick’s MAV being the clear loser, down 20.9% in February.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the March report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - Jan. 2024

Oku Newsletter — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 21:19:04 GMT

Executive Summary

Multichain (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Market Share (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Layer1 vs Layer2 (Volume, Liquidity, Fees)

Second-Order Values (Protocol Efficiency, Fee Rates, Protocol Yield)

UNI Token

Executive Summary

In January 2024, the Uniswap Protocol processed $46.59 billion in monthly volume (-1.5%) across $4.35 billion in liquidity (+13.4%), earning market makers $70.76 million in fees (-10.6%).

Across all chains, Ethereum saw the most Uniswap volume with $25.9 billion in v3 pools, seconded by Arbitrum. Scroll saw the highest month-over-month growth in volume, liquidity, and fees.

The protocol experienced a relative decline in volume of -0.3% over competing DEX protocols, with a 3.9% relative increase in liquidity and no change in fees collected.

Layer 2 deployments received 34.7% of all Uniswap volume, the highest percentage to date, while claiming an insignificant portion of liquidity (11.2%) and fees (19.85%).

Multichain

Highlighting activity across each major chain with a Uniswap deployment, this section informs on the absolute growth of the Uniswap Protocol and the relative growth across multiple chains.

Only chains with high-quality API data are included.

Volume

The protocol saw a consistent increase in monthly volume from the lows of September 2023 until January 2024, where volume fell 1.5% month over month. Overall, protocol volume is trending upward, and we can expect to see continued growth in the coming months as the market returns to bull market price action and onchain activity.

This month, many recent Unsiwap v3 deployments performed well, with BNB Chain, Scroll, and Rootstock leading the way. Existing major deployments underperformed with Uniswap v2 on Ethereum and v3 on Polygon and Optimism, each falling 15% month over month.

Relatively, Uniswap v2 saw the largest decrease in market share, falling 1.4%, while Arbitrum’s share of protocol volume rose 3% to 24.3% of all trading activity. Since the September lows, Arbitrum has been steadily growing its share of protocol volume and is now by far the leading Uniswap v3 Layer 2 deployment, with Polygon being the next closest at a 5.5% volume share.

Liquidity

The protocol’s liquidity is much more stable than the volume flowing through it. From this year’s low in September 2023 to its high this month, there is only a 36% change compared to the 165% change in volume over the same period.

The Uniswap Protocol saw a yearly high in liquidity, reaching $4.35 billion across all chains and versions this month.

Despite only occupying 8.7% of protocol volume, Uniswap v2 now accounts for 38.6% of liquidity after growing 31.7% to $1.67 billion this month. Uniswap v2’s inability to concentrate liquidity sets itself back from the newer v3 iteration, requiring more liquidity to process the same amount of volume.

The protocol grew deposits 13% this month, with Uniswap v2 leading the way, followed by Ethereum’s v3 instance. The recent deployments performed well, with Scroll growing liquidity 245% month over month, Rootstock growing 89.9%, and BNB Chain growing 23%.

Fees

Unsurprisingly, the Monthly Fee chart trends alongside the Monthly Volume chart. Liquidity providers earned low fees for the year in September of 2023, which rose to December and fell slightly in the first month of January. Since protocol liquidity spiked this month to yearly highs, fees are split between the greater number of pool assets.

Across all chains, fees fell 10.6% month over month, with Optimism seeing the most considerable decrease, down 27.6%. Despite the rough month for liquidity providers, Arbitrum, Scroll, and Rootstock fee collectors saw large increases in earnings alongside the healthy volume increase.

Market Share

Pancakeswap, Curve, Camelot, TraderJoe, Quickswap, Balancer, and Maverick meet this criterion.

Volume

Month over month, Uniswap Protocol dominance stayed consistent, moving slightly from 60.3% to 60%, with a slight fall in volume shown above.

Camelot was the biggest winner this month, with a 26.7% increase in volume and a 0.7% increase in market share. TraderJoe, on the other side, lost 2.1% market share with a 32.5% volume decrease. Uniswap and Pancakeswap had relatively minor changes compared to the smaller DEXs, experiencing more volume volatility.

Liquidity

Despite processing the majority of volume, Uniswap has a lower TVL than the sum of its competitors. We’ll look further into this phenomenon in the Capital Efficiency section.

In the last month, Uniswap’s liquidity rose 13.3%, led by Uniswap v2 - while competitor liquidity fell 3.5%, increasing Uniswap’s market share by 5.4%.

Uniswap saw the largest increase in liquidity at 13.4% month over month, followed by Curve with 5.0%. Pancakeswap and TraderJoe experienced the most significant outflows at -12.7% and -8.9% respectively.

Compared with the table above, we notice significantly less liquidity volatility than volume.

Fees

Uniswap generated $79 million in fees for its liquidity providers in December 2023, followed by a 10.6% decrease to $70.8 million in January. Despite the drop, Uniswap still holds a 62.8% market share in fees, with competitors only generating 37.2% combined.

Month-over-month fees remained relatively stable in the spot DEX ecosystem on aggregate.

TraderJoe saw the most significant drop in fees (-29.4%) alongside the fall in volume throughout January. Camelot outperformed the rest, growing its fees by 14.7% to a 3.8% market share.

Concerning fee generation for liquidity providers, the Uniswap Protocol remains king.

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

January 2024, Layer 2 was the closest it has ever been to surpassing Layer 1 at 35% of the total volume. Since September 2023, Layer 2 has consistently grown its share; with the protocol's continued growth on Arbitrum and Base, along with new deployment initiatives, we'll be monitoring the volume comparison in the future.

Liquidity

Despite having comparable volume figures, Uniswap Layer 1 deployments have 7.88x more liquidity than Layer 2.

There are a few plausible explanations for the discrepancy, the first being that Uniswap v2 (Ethereum) boasts a 38.6% share of protocol liquidity despite only accounting for 17.1% of volume. On top of that, Arbitrum accounts for 24.3% of protocol volume yet, only 6.6% of liquidity, exacerbating the gap. Until liquidity moves to follow volume, the trend will continue.

Fees

The fee chart trends similarly to volume with lower figures on Layer 2, likely due to Layer 1 volume taking place in high-fee pools.

In January, Layer 1 liquidity providers earned 4.06x more than those on Layer 2.

However, accounting for the difference in liquidity, Layer 2 providers made 94% more per dollar deposited.

Second-Order Values

We analyzed the second-order values of the Uniswap Protocol against its competitors. Uniswap v2 and v3 are divided in these data sets to highlight the differences in design and outcome.

Protocol Efficiency

Protocol efficiency is measured by dividing the total volume by the total liquidity - finding how much volume is generated per dollar of liquidity.

Uniswap v3, Camelot, TraderJoe, and Quickswap perform well in this category, enabling around $20 in volume per dollar of liquidity. Balancer, Curve, and Uniswap v2 fall short with less than $5 per. Maverick outperforms the rest at $40+ of volume per dollar in liquidity.

Fee Rates

The average fee rate is measured by dividing fees by volume - determining the fee rate on each dollar of volume.

Uniswap and TraderJoe have the highest fee rates at 0.3%, the pre-set amount for all v2 pools; the majority of DEXs charge an average pool fee between 0.075% and 0.15%, with Maverick much lower, near 0.02%.

Protocol Yield

A protocol’s yield is found by dividing fees by liquidity - displaying the monthly return per dollar deposited.

Uniswap v3’s liquidity providers earn an average of 2.2% per month, around 3x the earnings of v2 depositors. Curve and Balancer providers earn a low 0.3% and 0.2% respectively, making them the worst liquidity destinations in the group. TraderJoe tops the list at 6.7% monthly returns for providers.

UNI Token

The Uniswap Protocol's governance token, UNI, has performed poorly in the past year relative to the industry mainstays, BTC and ETH. At the end of January 2024, the token was down 11.72% yearly, with BTC and ETH each up by double-digit percentages.

This is not uncommon, as major crypto assets tend to move first in the bull market; we'll be following UNI's price action throughout 2024.

UNI performed at the median compared to its competitors, with most DEX tokens being down 10%. The clear winner over the past year was TraderJoe's JOE token, which rocketed in April of 2023 and returned to similar levels in late 2024, up 100%.

The data from this report was sourced from the Oku API, Oku Analytics, DeFiLlama, and TradingView charting. Subscribe to the newsletter for the February report and more updates on the performance of the Uniswap Protocol across chains and against competitors.

Oku Newsletter

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - October ‘24

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Multichain

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Market Share

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Second-Order Values

Protocol Efficiency

Fee Rates

Protocol Yield

UNI Token

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - September ‘24

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Multichain

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Market Share

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Second-Order Values

Protocol Efficiency

Fee Rates

Protocol Yield

UNI Token

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - August ‘24

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Multichain

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Market Share

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Second-Order Values

Protocol Efficiency

Fee Rates

Protocol Yield

UNI Token

Uniswap Monthly Financial Report & Analysis - July ‘24

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Multichain

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Market Share

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Layer 1 & Layer 2

Volume

Liquidity

Fees

Second-Order Values

Protocol Efficiency

Fee Rates

Protocol Yield