The decentralized exchange Uniswap launched in May 2020 and has become to most prominent trading platform in the DeFi space. Since their launch users have traded for more than $100 billion in tokens with each other.
Uniswap allows users to trade all kinds of ERC-20 tokens, which are tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The platform works completely on-chain, which means that there’s no centralized storage. All trading facilities are provided through smart contract on the blockchain and value provided by users.
The trading platform launched in May 2020, and really gained traction during the summer. The native governance token UNI is now one of the top 20 currencies in the world, according to data from Coingecko.
Incredible growth DeFi TVL
One year ago the DeFi sector had just 1 billion dollars in total value locked (TVL). The TVL exploded during the DeFi and has been expanding ever since. The entire DeFi sector is seeing tremendous growth, reaching a total of more than 50 billion dollars TVL on February 13th.
The TVL is heavily influenced by the value of tokens, but also DappRadar’s Adjusted TVL, which stabilizes token prizes over a 90 day period, is seeing growth. In the past three month there’s been approximately 45% growth.
The success of Uniswap spawned a variety of copycats, that have now become household names. SushiSwap, which recently doubled its TVL to more than 3 billion dollars, probably has become the biggest contender.
DeFi Spreading to Other Blockchains
The tremendous success and creation of value by the decentralized finance sector on the Ethereum blockchain doesn’t go unnoticed. At the same time gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain, caused by the trading activity in DeFi, are making it difficult for non-whales to trade their assets properly. Alternatives are popping up across a variety of blockchain solutions, including QuickSwap on Polygon and PancakeSwap on BINANCE Smart Chain.
In a recent report by DappRadar we concluded that Binance Smart Chain is proving to be a strong competitor for Ethereum in the DeFi space. In January alone the blockchain recorded 15 billion dollars in transactions, while the first week of February had already seen 24 billion dollars in trading volume. PancakeSwap and Venus are the most important DeFi products on Binance.
