Uniswap v3, the latest creation under the unicorn brand, made a dramatic rise in trading volumes just two weeks after its inception. Crypto data aggregator Messari’s Ryan Watkins noted that on May 20, Uniswap v3 had 81% of the Uniswap v2 volumes over the past 24 hours.
Furthermore, Watkins showed that as of May 16, Uniswap’s latest decentralized exchange processed 15% more weekly volumes than rival Uniswap’s original fork – SushiSwap. The v3 exchange moved $6.5 billion, while SushiSwap recorded $5.6 billion. The fourth-largest Ethereum-based decentralized exchange, 0x, managed to move $3 billion weekly, followed by Curve with $1.9 billion, and Balancer with $1.2 billion.
However, v3’s volumes aiming at surpassing v2, come amid Uniswap v3 holding only 15% of the total value locked (TVL) of Uniswap v2.
The Messari researcher emphasized that Uniswap v3 is the only Ethereum-based automated market maker recording volumes of more than 100% of its $900 million TVL each day. For instance, Uniswap v3’s turnover is 104%, while v2 ranks second with 20%, followed by SushiSwap with 16%, Bancor with 6%, and Balancer with 5%.
Combined, the total market share of the Uniswap v2 and v3 decentralized exchanges represent more than 60% of all Ethereum-based DEX trade.
In addition to Watkins’ insights, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams noted that Uniswap v3’s volumes exploded to 3.3 times its $900 million TVL. The spike came amid May 19’s crypto market crash, with Bitcoin trading as low as $30,000 on the day. Meanwhile, Uniswap recorded more than $2.6 billion worth of trades in 24 hours — beating out its previous record by more than $1 billion.
Uniswap v3’s volumes seem to have been affected by the speculative dog-token frenzy, with ETH/SHIB ranking as the hottest trading pair on the exchange when looking at fees generated and the total number of trades. Other dog-related tokens like Akita Inu ($AKITA) and Dogelon Mars ($ELON) ranked fifth and sixth by the total number of trades respectively.
Meanwhile, the global crypto market is still trying to regain some of the losses that saw Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top cryptocurrencies by more than 15%. Bitcoin, for example, is up 4 percent daily, trading at $41,970.41. The altcoin leader, Ethereum, struggles to breach over $2,800 per token in several attempts since its weekly high of $4,171.02. Crypto projects like Binance’s BNB, Ripple, Litecoin, and Chainlink recorded double-digit daily losses.