The Uniswap community celebrated an important milestone today, as the protocol crossed an £800 billion ($1 trillion USD) lifetime cumulative trade volume.
Uniswap was one of the first decentralised exchanges to go live on the Ethereum mainnet in November 2018. Its goal was to create a non-custodial platform for swapping, trading, and earning on the blockchain. More than a trillion dollars in volume has passed through the protocol in three and a half years.
Uniswap now has a daily volume of £1.2 billion, which is three times that of its nearest competitor, Pancakeswap (£400 million), and nineteen times that of Sushiswap (£56.5 million), the second-largest decentralised exchange on Ethereum. On November 10, 2021, it reached an all-time high daily volume of $8.8 billion.
It also has a total value locked (TVL) of more than £4.7 billion across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum, with Sushiswap and Balancer each having £1.67 billion, Bancor £503 million, and 1inch £7.98 million. Only loan protocols like MakerDAO (£7.7 billion), Curve (£7.2 billion), and Aave (£6.86 billion) have more value locked in.
On December 1, 2021, Uniswap’s all-time high TVL was £8.37 billion. Until the market collapse triggered by the Terra meltdown on May 7, it traded in a band of £4.8 billion to £6.4 billion in TVL.
Despite these great stats, the protocol’s market capitalization has been steadily declining for more than a year. In early May 2021, Uniswap’s fully diluted market cap reached an all-time high of £26.5 billion, with its UNI coin reaching £33.7. Its completely diluted market capitalization is now £4.2 billion, with a token price of £4.38.
Uniswap is not alone in this. Despite maintaining or strengthening fundamentals, the whole DeFi sector has been trading in a bear market since early May 2021, according to CoinBit. Even the most valuable procedures have lost nearly 80% of their value. UNI is currently trading at an 87% discount to its previous high.