Uniswap v3 overtakes SushiSwap by volume, on track to surpass v2 this month

Despite launching to the Ethereum mainnet just two weeks ago, Uniswap v3 has already overtaken SushiSwap to rank as the second-largest Ethereum-based decentralized exchange by trade volume.

On May 20, Ryan Watkins of crypto data aggregator Messari noted that v3 had hosted 81% of the volume hosted by v2 over 24 hours earlier this week.

The researcher shared data showing that as of May 16, v3 had processed 15% more weekly volume than major Ethereum-based DEX SushiSwap, beating out Sushi’s $5.6 billion with $6.5 billion. 0x ranked behind SushiSwap with $3 billion, followed by Curve with $1.9 billion, and Balancer with $1.2 billion.

Yesterday Uniswap V3 reached 81% of the volume as Uniswap V2. This is all without liquidity incentives, passive LP managers, or even its soon to come layer-2 deployment. pic.twitter.com/L93wExSKHZ

— Ryan Watkins (@RyanWatkins_) May 19, 2021

With v3 coming within reach of v2’s daily volume despite only holding 15% of the total value locked, or TVL, v3 appears to be realizing its mission of increased capital efficiency.

Watkins noted that v3 is the only automated market maker that turns over more than 100% of its $900 million TVL each day, beating out its rivals by more than 400%. V3’s turnover is equal to 104% of the platform’s TVL, Uniswap v2 ranks second with 20%, followed by SushiSwap with 16%, Bancor with 6%, and Balancer with 5%.

The combined market share of v2 and v3 suggests Uniswap now represents more than 60% of all Ethereum-based DEX trade.

Uniswap founder, Hayden Adams, tweeted that v3’s daily volume surged to 3.3 times its $900 TVL amid yesterday’s frenzied crash that saw Bitcoin test support at roughly $30,000, with v3 processing more than $2.6 billion worth of trades in 24 hours — beating out its previous record by more than $1 billion.

Adams added that layer-two scaling is next on v3’s roadmap to lower fees for users.

2/The demand and value prop of defi is quite clear at this pointAnd so are next steps - L1 and L2 scaling to support more users while lowering fees

— Hayden Adams (@haydenzadams) May 20, 2021

Uniswap v3’s volume initially appeared to have bolstered by the speculative dog-token frenzy that briefly gripped the markets in early May, with the Ether/Shiba Inu ($SHIB) pairing ranking as v3’s dominant pair by fees generated and total number of trades and third by weekly volume five days after the platform’s launch. Akita Inu ($AKITA) and Dogelon Mars ($ELON) also ranked fifth and sixth by total number of trades respectively.

SHIB has since fallen to rank seventh by volume and third by fee generation, however, is still half of v3’s top-ranked pairing by weekly number of trades.