DeFi Platform Uniswap Sees $1 Billion in Daily Trade Volumes

The increase in yield farming activity on decentralized exchange SushiSwap, a fork of Uniswap, and other similar protocols have piloted the rise of Uniswap to the first DEX to exceed $1 billion in terms of 24-hour trade volumes, data shows.

Uniswap Hits $1 Billion in Volume

As per data on analytics site and price tracker CoinGecko, Uniswap is the third-largest DEX by normalized trade volume with over $1.02 billion worth exchanged yesterday on the bourse in the past 24 hours.

The massive volume means Uniswap is now ranked only below crypto exchange behemoths Binane and OKEx, which see $6.25 billion and $1.10 billion in daily trade volumes. Furthermore, the DEX has displaced other high profile crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, Huobi, and Bitfinex, in terms of daily trade volumes.

Explaining the Uniswap boom is the rise in DeFi and yield farming tokens, the latter of which provide interest rates of over 1,000% annualized on some platforms (such as Kimchi Finance and Sushiswap). Traders and investors have inevitably rushed to trade such obscure tokens to turn profits.

As per on-chain tracking site DeFi Pulse, over $1.69 billion, in various Ethereum-based tokens, are locked on these platforms.

The Returns May Not Last

Meanwhile, some critics and analysts state the high returns and Uniswap’s allure may not last long — especially if the purported ponzinomics of liquidity providers and buying propping up token prices continues.

These include products like SushiSwap, Hotdog swap, Kimchi Finance, and other funny-sounding names, all of which are unaudited yield farming outlets that are printing their own obscure tokens to attract liquidity, returns, and users to their platforms.

Ethereum co-founder has spoken against this trend in recent days. He said on a tweet that the sheer volume of coins that need to be printed nonstop to pay liquidity providers in these 50-100% per year yield farming regimes makes major national central banks look like they’re all run by Ron Paul.

Seriously, the sheer volume of coins that needs to be printed nonstop to pay liquidity providers in these 50-100%/year yield farming regimes makes major national central banks look like they're all run by Ron Paul.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 31, 2020

His comments came weeks after the Ethereum co-founder told followers in a different tweet that they did not have to participate in ‘the latest hot DeFi thing’ to be in ethereum. In fact, unless you really understand what’s going on, it’s likely best to sit out or participate only with very small amounts, he said.