Historical milestone for volumes on the DEX crypto Uniswap

Uniswap is the most used crypto DEX in the world, and recently it has surpassed a historic milestone regarding trading volumes. 

Indeed, its cumulative trading volumes since launch have exceeded a total of 250 billion dollars. 

The trading volumes on the crypto DEX Uniswap

Uniswap is now a multichain decentralized exchange, as it was originally born on Ethereum but now also allows trading on various layer-2 solutions of Ethereum, including Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Base, as well as on other blockchains like BSC and Avalanche.

The one hundred billion dollars of cumulative trading volumes was exceeded exactly one year ago, while the two hundred billion was only surpassed in February. 

Note that the first surge, which began in 2021, had ended in November 2022, and that the second one had experienced a significant slowdown between July and August of last year. 

However, since the crypto markets have regained strength, following the news that BlackRock had applied for the issuance of an ETF on Bitcoin and that Grayscale had won in court against the SEC regarding its application for the issuance of an ETF, there has been a new surge in volumes on DEXs.

Between December 2022 and January 2023, the total daily trading volumes on Uniswap had also dropped below 400 million dollars per day, compared to for example a trading volume on Binance always much higher than one billion dollars. Uniswap is the largest decentralized crypto exchange in the world, and Binance is the largest centralized crypto exchange. 

With the new recovery of the crypto markets at the end of 2023, daily volumes on Uniswap had risen to over two billion dollars, and then skyrocketed in March 2024, reaching over 5 billion. 

In the second half of April they dropped a bit, down to 1.6 billion yesterday, but these are still figures much higher than last year. 

The trading volumes on centralized exchanges

Comparing the $1.6 billion trading volume on Uniswap’s DEX yesterday with that of the major centralized exchanges, the difference still appears huge. 

Limiting to spot volumes, Binance yesterday exceeded 20 billion dollars, while among the main exchanges in the world only two others have exceeded 3 billion (Bybit and Upbit). 

Coinbase has however surpassed 2 billion, as well as Upbit, while for example Kraken has recorded a total daily trading volume lower than that of Uniswap (1.1 billion). 

Yesterday’s data from Uniswap, however, is in line, for example, with that of Bitget, although far lower than that of the main CEX (Uniswap is the main DEX in circulation today). 

It is worth noting that the trading volumes in March 2024 on Uniswap are in line with those of November 2021, when many cryptocurrencies reached their all-time price peaks. 

It should be remembered that on Uniswap Bitcoin is not present, or rather there are only tokens on other chains (especially Ethereum) that replicate its value, and that Ethereum is the reference asset for DEXs like Uniswap.

For example, during this 2024 ETH has not yet set new all-time price highs, which remain those of November 2021. 

Volumes on other crypto DEX: Uniswap dominates the scene

Uniswap now clearly dominates among DEX, or decentralized exchanges. 

Considering the daily trading volumes, Uniswap alone holds more than 30% of all trading volumes recorded in the last 24 hours on all decentralized exchanges. 

In second place there is Raydium, with less than half of Uniswap’s volumes (about 800 million dollars), but closely followed by PancakeSwap with over 600 million. 

Note that Uniswap is the only DEX in the world that is currently surpassing one billion dollars in total daily trading volumes, and that only 6 other DEXs exceed one hundred million. 

This certifies that DEXs are still much less used than CEXs, among which there are at least 15 well-known exchanges that have exceeded $100 million in trades in just yesterday. If we also consider the lesser-known CEXs, the total number of those that exceeded $100 million in trades yesterday rises to over 50. 

So DEXs are still overall far behind CEXs, and among DEXs the dominance of Uniswap is undisputed, although not absolute. 

DEX and CEX

The reasons why CEXs continue to be much more popular than DEXs are numerous. 

The first one is definitely the ease of use. CEXs, for example, do not require self-custody of funds, and although this should actually be considered a limitation, it makes them much easier and more convenient to use, even if virtually more risky. 

Furthermore, CEXs are often created specifically with very simplified graphical interfaces to allow more or less anyone to use them independently, and often they also offer extremely simplified trading or investment tools that attract a large number of people. 

Moreover, they are also extremely fast and generally have relatively low fees, although some layer-2 based DEXs are now able to have even lower fees. 

The CEX are real companies that also do a lot of advertising, while the DEX are generally not companies, and they do much less advertising.

In other words, everything suggests that CEX will continue to attract many more users than DEX, thus offering a more liquid and faster market. The only real major limitation of CEX is the requirement for identity verification, while DEX can also be used completely anonymously.