The decline of centralized entities has worked out well for their decentralized counterparts. Over the weekend, USDC witnessed a significant trading volume on several decentralized exchanges.
Uniswap, for one, reached its highest daily volume ever of $11.84 billion on March 11th. But it isn’t the only decentralized protocol that saw traction.
Decentralized Exchanges Register Impressive Growth
The development comes in the backdrop of Circle’s USDC de-pegging event that occurred over the weekend after the collapse of Signature, Silvergate, and Silicon Valley Bank.
Several centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Bitpay, halted payments and auto conversions in the stablecoin. This caused the stablecoin prices to fluctuate wildly, and gas fees soared as investors rushed to decentralized entities to exchange USDC for wrapped ether and other tokens.
According to data from Dune Analytics, USDC pools for wrapped ether (WETH), USDT, and DAI have managed to rake in $15 billion in volume throughout the week before hitting the milestone on Saturday. Uniswap generated $8.7 million in transaction fees as a result of high traffic on the same day, hitting a 10-month high.
Even the popular DEX Curve Finance, which is designed for stablecoin swapping, recorded its biggest daily trading volume of nearly $8 billion while amassing $952k in fees. SushiSwap also experienced a surge in activity and went on to become one of the most used smart contracts by top Ethereum whales during the same period.
Turning to DeFi During Major Collapses
The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, which relies on smart contracts instead of middlemen to provide financial services, has seen tremendous growth over the past couple of years.
Following last year’s back-to-back collapses, faith in centralized institutions is at an all-time low. DeFi, on the other hand, has enjoyed something of a revitalization due to this.
A recent report by CoinGecko suggested that funding for centralized projects appears to have reached saturation point as DeFi projects saw increased funding even as the market shifted from bull to bear.
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