The year 2020 saw the cryptocurrency market reach new peaks. It also led to the development of decentralized exchanges and provided the opportunity for them to carve out a niche in the previously centralized ecosystem. The torchbearer for the DEXs has been Uniswap, whose growth astounded the whole crypto market.
Even though an increased on-chain volume is expected for DEXs as every trade involves an on-chain transaction, Uniswap was leading among DEXs. The progress of DEXs can be visible in the on-chain ETH flows highlighted below.
Source: Our Network
Along with decentralized exchanges, the surging market also gave way to stablecoins to flourish in terms of volume. According to a report, the on-chain volume for stablecoins reached a new monthly high in December 2020 of $178.34 billion. This peak suggested a 20% increase from the previous months’ volume.
Whereas compared to the previous high witnessed in September 2020, this was 11.3% or $18.16 billion higher. Tether [USDT] has been an important stable coin whenever BTC rallies and held 71.2% of the stablecoin volume. USD Coin [USDC] and DAI followed with 16.2% and 6.4% respectively.
As Bitcoin and the crypto market continued to rally in 2021, the net inflow of stablecoins to exchanges has been noting a rise every single day, except on 2 January.
Source: Our Network
The chart above showed the last 6 months of net exchange flow of ERC-20 stablecoins. The exchange witnessing most inflows was Binance as it held $2.307 billion in stablecoin balance. The exchange’s diverse holdings were >$1B in BUSD, >$500M in USDT, >$500M in USDC, plus other stablecoins.
Here, Uniswap took the second spot with $708.656 million. Even though the difference between the first two places is large, it was not occupied by a centralized exchange. Popular centralized exchanges like Huobi, OKEx, Coinbase, and others followed Uniswap with stablecoin balanced under $600 million, at press time.
The decentralized exchanges have gained a large chunk of the on-chain volume along with the stablecoin inflow in this bull market. As we move ahead, 2021 could be an important period for the growth of more decentralized projects.
