Binance Smart Chain’s DEXes still rule.
That’s the upshot of heavy action in the crypto markets as bulls battle bears to retake control of the narrative. Here’s a round-up of the latest moves in DEX volume, plus how Solana and Terra are faring against rivals and the latest with Ethereum Layer 2s.
Binance DEXes Dominate Despite Falling TVL
BSC’s TVL rocketed during the first half of 2021, surging to post a record high of $31.7B on May 10, 2021 after starting the year with $124M according to DeFi Llama.
The once surging network slumped down to $11.4B earlier this month, its lowest level since April 2021. BSC now represents $12.2B after gaining 7%, but is still down 62% from its all-time high.
According to CoinGecko, BSC’s PancakeSwap, BiSwap, and Dodo currently rank as the second, third, and fourth by 24-hour volume among decentralized exchanges. They represent $474.7M, $446.3M, and $201.5M respectively. The exchanges combined represent 23.8% of the $4.7B traded on DEXes over the past 24 hours.
BiSwap is surging at the moment, adding 29.6% to its TVL to rank seventh among BSC-based protocols with $425M. Its trade volume has rocketed into new all-time highs, surging by more than 10 times from $45.7M over the past 24 hours. Its native BSW token has responded with a 24-hour gain of 152% after listing on Binance’s centralized exchange yesterday.
PancakeSwap is the top protocol of the BSC network, representing 37.7% of the network’s TVL with $4.6B. During its December peak, PancakeSwap was processing more than $2B worth of trades daily. Dodo ranks as BSC’s 26th largest protocol with just $50M despite its impressive trade volume. Its normalized exchange volume is currently at an all-time high.
Ethereum’s Uniswap v3 is the leading DEX by 24-hour activity with $1.47B or nearly one-third of combined DEX volume. Uniswap’s v2 iteration also ranks seventh with 156.6M in daily trades.
Solana and Fantom Struggle to Reclaim Marketshare
Solana is up 5.75% after posting a six-month low of $6.6B earlier this month. The network carved significant market share away from Ethereum and BSC as it rocketed from a $600M TVL at the start of the third quarter last year to highs of $15B in November and December.
But it too has been displaced by rival low-cost Layer 1 networks, with Solana shedding 53% of its TVL since topping out in early December.
Fantom is yet to recover from the aggressive loss of capital it experienced at the start of the month when technical advisor Andre Cronje and senior solutions architect Anton Nell announced they would exit DeFi. Although Fantom’s TVL bounced 8% to $6.74B, the network is down 44% since the start of the month.
Ethereum Rebound
A bullish week for market action drove an 8.4% gain for the combined market cap of DeFi assets. The sector now represents $125B, its highest level in two months according to CoinGecko.
Ethereum’s TVL bounced 8.6% this past week as top-ten protocols Curve, Aave, and Instadapp all enjoyed double-digit TVL growth. Fifth-ranked Lido posted the strongest bounce of Ethereum’s top 50 protocols, adding 34.5% to its locked assets.
Ethereum currently represents $118.5B in locked assets, down by nearly 28% since its November all-time high. Ethereum’s Layer 2s also posted a strong week. The sector added 10.6% to its TVL, currently boasting a combined TVL of $6.2B according to L2beat.
Arbitrum’s TVL is above $3B for the first time in 18 days after adding 11.5% to its TVL. The network represents 50% of Ethereum’s combined Layer 2 TVL.
Optimism grew by 24% to tag $530M and is now at its highest level since early January. The network is only 5% away from setting a new all-time high.
Metis Andromeda’s growth was sluggish this past week, with the rollup network plateauing after tagging a record high of $743.7M on March 19.
ZkSync grew by 85.3% this week, blasting past its previous February high of $95.2M to tag $140M. Yesterday, zkSync shared data from DappRadar indicating that its leading DEX, ZigZag, would rank as Ethereum’s 8th largest by unique users with 2,122 in 24 hours.
New Highs for Terra
The Terra network continues to grow, again posting new highs for TVL this week.
Terra emerged as the leading low-cost Layer 1 network in late 2021, with its growth being propelled by the controversial fixed interest rate of roughly 20% offered by the network’s leading protocol, Anchor.
While questions swirled regarding the sustainability of Anchor in February, the Luna Foundation Guard mobilized $450M to support its high yields until November. The move restored confidence in Terra, at least for now, driving a 50% increase in the network’s TVL over the past six weeks. Terra currently boasts a TVL of $27.2B and represents 21.7% of the combined DeFi capitalization.
Anchor added 8.3% to its TVL this week. The protocol is now up 61.8% over the past month with $14.2B in total. Terra’s second-largest protocol, Lido, also added 93.4% to its TVL, bringing it to a cool $8.1B. The fourth-ranked Stader is up 148% with nearly $813M.
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