- Total DEX trading volume rose to a four-month high of $15.12 billion on March 11.
- Total fees collected on Uniswap reached its highest value since May 10.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) recorded an exponential increase in trading activity in the last 24 hours after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) triggered FUD in the broader crypto market and singled out the USD coin (USDC).
According to DeFiLlama, total DEX trading volume rose to a four-month high of $15.12 billion on March 11, with a weekly growth rate of more than 100%.
Source: DeFiLlama
DEX dominance over aggregated DEX and centralized exchange (CEX) volume increased to 26.66% at time of writing.
Popular DEXs register impressive growth
The decline of centralized entities has previously acted in favor of DeFi protocols. It was exemplified in the post-FTX collapse period when users began to prefer self-service over centralized exchanges.
Curve Finance (CRV), a DEX designed for stablecoin swapping, recorded its largest daily trading volume, nearly $8 billion in the last 24 hours.
Due to high trading traffic, total fees collected on the platform rose to $952,000, the highest in four months, according to Crypto Fees.
Similarly, the largest DEX in terms of trading volume, Uniswap (UNI) delivered its best performance in four months after its volume rose to $3.45 billion in the last 24 hours.
Transaction fees paid by users hit a 10-month high of $8.75 billion at press time.
Source: DeFiLlama
Another popular DEX, SushiSwap (SUSHI), also saw a jump in activity, becoming one of the most used smart contracts by top Ethereum whales in the last 24 hours.
RIGHT IN: $SUSHI @sushiswap one of the MOST USED smart contracts among the top 100 #ETH whales within the last 24 hours🐳
Check out the top 100 whales here: https://t.co/N5qqsCAH8j
(and hodl $BBW to see data for top 5000!)#SUSHI #whalestats #babywhale #BBW pic.twitter.com/JtN7rwz8zX
— WhaleStats (tracking crypto whales) (@WhaleStats) March 12, 2023
The future is DeFi!
DEXs have grown by leaps and bounds over the last 3-4 years. Development activity across various projects has increased manifold according to a tweet from Token terminal, with developers working on as many as 20 different projects as of March 10.
This argues well for the future of decentralized finance (DeFi).
Bullish on the future of DEXs pic.twitter.com/0ITgzUo7n3
— Token Terminal (@tokenterminal) 11 March 2023
Eventually, USDC lost its dollar peg on some exchanges amid concerns that reserves backing the second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization were tied up in the failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). At the time of writing, USDC recovered to $0.95 according to CoinMarketCap.