One of the most popular decentralized exchanges, Uniswap (UNI), records the highest number of trading fees in the last three months but was not able to turn them into revenue due to increased competition from OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, within the market.
Messari, an analytics platform or a leading provider of market intelligence products that help professionals navigate cryptocurrency with ease, tweeted on October 16 that although UNI has collected an impressive amount of fees over the last three months, OpenSea has managed to generate more revenue than Uniswap.
According to the graph in the tweet, OpenSea was able to produce roughly over $600 million in revenue, while, Uniswap’s total revenue was close to $400 million.
As Messari said in the tweet:
“While both @Uniswap and @opensea set the standard for fees generated, only one of the two, in OpenSea, sees positive revenue capture due to its take rate.”
In addition, when analyzing crypto protocols, the analytics platform stresses the importance of understanding the difference between protocol fees and protocol revenue. Messari said, “it’s crucial to understand” it.
Drop-In Uniswap Trading Volume In Q3
Messari recently revealed in its quarterly report, aptly titled “State of Uniswap Q3 2022,” that key performance metrics for Uniswap had declined between the months of July and September.
In terms of its key performance metrics, it was discovered that the platform’s trading volume fell by 30% on a quarter-over-quarter basis (QOQ) between Q3 and Q2, from $172.80 million to $120.92 million. Its trading volume has also been continuously falling since Q4 2021.
Moreover, the decrease in crypto market prices between July and September led to a corresponding drop in Uniswap’s liquidity provider payouts, 21.8% from Q1 to Q2 this year. They were even lower during July and September ( over 38.8%), and yearly fees have fallen by 52.9%.
Uniswap Revenues Across Times
When Uniswap initially started facilitating trades in May 2020, its trading volume was $57.8 billion. By 2021, it had grown to $681.1 billion. The protocol’s revenues were taking off in 2021. The protocol was widely adopted, and by March 2021, monthly revenues had surpassed $100 million.
In May, they reached an all-time high of $238.4 billion, more than 61% higher than the previous quarter, according to Messari’s Q4 2021 report. However, the introduction of V3 on Arbitrum and Polygon helped it jump-start new liquidity pairings.
Within the first month of becoming live, the amount of V3 transactions increased significantly and surpassed that of V2. V3 produced deals of $58.9 billion in Q2, the period in which it was introduced. Comparatively, the value of transactions in Q4 was $180 billion, a 205% rise.
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