The visuals above describe ETH activity on Thorchain

• Thorchain is one of the first cross-chain programs enabling users to swap coins for native coins on other blockchains
• Since January 1st 2022, the amount of Ethereum being removed from the platform increased substantially. This is the largest increase we have seen thus far
• With averages in the 300-500 range by day, that amount is now closer to 4,000-5,000 per day
• There is a significantly higher average transaction count of ETH being removed and the sum of ETH being removed from the Thorchain platform than any other
• This is likely due to Thorchain offering native swaps, making it easy to go cross-chain
• Thorchain is the busiest chain by a landslide

What’s Ethereum?

• Ethereum is the second largest crypto in terms of market cap only to Bitcoin, and the largest proof of stake network. Ethereum is the largest decentralized blockchain with support for smart contract. They are the host to all "ERC-20" tokens, such as Doge, Polygon, and Decentraland. Ethereum was the first major blockchain to support smart contract, in addition to being one of the first to run a proof of stake network. Although the transition from proof of work took slightly longer than expected, users with greater than 32 ETH are able to stake their coins.

What’s Solana?

• Solana is a blockchain designed to host decentralized and scalable applications. The goal of Solana's architecture is to demonstrate there is a way to organize software algorithms that, when used in combination with a blockchain, eliminates software as a performance bottleneck, enabling transaction output to scale proportionally with network bandwidth. Solana enables up to 710,000 transactions per second on a giga-bit network- compared to a measly 15 transactions per second on Ethereum.

What makes it unique?

• As for the unique aspect, Solana relies on a proof of history method for confirming transactions. Proof of history works by cryptographically verifying a passage of time between two between two events. Its differentiation from proof of stake is the reason that the network can handle such a large volume of transactions, and therefore significantly lower transaction fees.  

What’s Algorand?

• Algorand is a fast and low cost proof of stake blockchain, and the first of its kind to pay dividends to basic coin holders. The blockchain was started by a former MIT Professor, who published the finite supply of 10,000,000,000 Algo (its native token) in 2019. It proves to be a cheaper and faster alternative to Ethereum, only lagging behind in actual capability. Because Ethereum is significantly older, developers have been writing smart contract for them instead. However, Algorand hopes to reverse this trend in the coming years.

What makes it unique?

• While Ethereum can publish 13 transactions per second, Algorand can have 100x that at 1,300. However, their plans are to be able to maximize the transaction speed to 3,000 per second. Additionally, Algorand is the first major blockchain to pay dividends to its coin holders, regardless of staking status- comparable to some stocks in the U.S. stock exchange. Recently, Algo was selected as the official blockchain partner of FIFA! It is unclear if there will be any functional benefit, but they will at the very least be sponsoring the North American and European teams, gaining exposure from studio sets, stadiums, and advertising.

Methodology

• On this dashboard, ETH swap volume is compared across several platforms, including:
  • Sushiswap
  • Uniswap
  • Thorchain
  • Solana

These protocols incorporate both DEXs on Ethereum (Uniswap and Sushiswap), and various blockchains (Solana and Thorchain).

Each chart section will have a transaction count over time bar chart, a total transaction count since September 1st 2022, and a sum of ETH swapped out of since September 2022.

\

What’s Thorchain?

• Thorchain gives users the option of providing assets to decentralized liquidity pools that specialize in cross chain transfers. The incredible thing about Thorchain is that enables users to exchange native assets of different blockchains for one another, without having to create a "wrapped" variant. Many other blockchains, including the Eth, Algo, and Solana blockchains are forced to create an artificial version of the other chain's assets. This leaves those assets susceptible to attacks when the network gets hacked.

What makes it unique?

• Thorchain's ability to allow users to perform cross-chain swaps with native assets on either side is unlike another program. Although there were a couple of network security issues, they seemed to have shored them up and have been adding compatible chains relentlessly. Native swaps are incredibly valuable to crypto traders, so there is incredibly high demand for these assets. What comes with high demand, are active liquidity pools. Thorchain needs to have large pools available for users who are looking to swap, so to incentive them further than the ridiculous APYs they offer, Thorchain introduced a reimbursement plan for users that suffer from impermanent loss. Impermanent loss occurs when 1 of the 2 assets that users who deposit into a pool becomes in higher demand than the other, aka its price is rising. The pool would become lopsided, but to combat that, the pool automatically buys more of the asset that's in higher demand with the one that's less. Thorchain eliminates this fear for potential LPers by reimbursing them with Rune stockpiled from transaction fees.

What’s IL protection?

• IL protection stands for "Impermanent Loss Protection"
• Impermanent loss is when the demand for 1 token in a swap pool shoots past the other, resulting in an imbalance in the pool
• When faced with the imbalance, the pool will automatically swap the more-in-demand token to the other one, to keep the pool balanced at a 50-50 split of dollar amount of the assets
• When the swap pair is messed with, it often creates impermanent loss; resulting in a decrease in value of any given users deposits in that pool
• Thorchain's IL protection program fights this by paying back users who suffer from impermanent loss by making up the difference to them with a portion of swap fees

What’s Sushiswap?

• Sushiswap is an example of a decentralized exchange. It is different from something like Coinbase, which still must adhere to government regulations. Sushiswap is an exchange built on the Ethereum platform where users can exchange cryptos at free will. It competes with other DEXs, such as Uniswap, Curve, and Pancakeswap.

The visuals above describe ETH activity on Uniswap

• Uniswap is another DEX on the Ethereum network. It was Sushiswap pre-fork. However, they have both evolved in their own ways since the fork
• Since January 1st 2022, the amount of Ethereum being removed from Uniswap has remained fairly constant
• With averages in the 20k range around New Years, to roughly 20k now
• Both the transaction count and the total amount of ETH moved compared to Sushiswap are significantly higher
• This is likely becauwse Sushiswap is essentially an under worked version of Uniswap. Sushiswap thought they were doing something when they just hard forked the code, but without the developers and engineers, they didn’t amount to much in the long haul

The visuals above go into detail on Sushiswap

• Sushiswap is a DEX that is available on the Ethereum network. It is a fork of its competitor, Uniswap
• Since January 1st 2022, there has been a relatively stable amount of ETH withdrawn from Sushiswap
• There were 55,000 transactions where ETH was withdrawn since September 1st, which was approximately 3 weeks before the merge were to take place
• In that time frame, there was just less than 3.5 million ETH extracted from the platform
• This makes Sushiswap the second to least active DEX when it comes to swaps, by both number of transactions and the sum of ETH removed

The visuals above describe ETH activity on AAVE

• Aave is a trading/lending platform that operates on the Ethereum network
• Since January 1st 2022, the amount of Ethereum being removed from the platform has subtly increased
• With averages in the 50-100 range by day, that amount is now closer to 200-300 in the weeks leading up to the merger
• While the number of transactions is significantly less than that of Sushiswap, its sum of ETH removed is not too far off
• This implies a significantly higher average amount of ETH removed from the AAVE platform than from Sushiswap

Conclusions // Takeaways

• Thorchain has the most active and responsive users
  • The activity when closing in on the merge was violently different than the activity on the other platforms
  • A potential reason may be because of how easy it is to flip from Ethereum exposure to Bitcoin
  • Thorchain is also the most advanced chain, so perhaps the more advanced users were being more cautious
• Sushiswap is a poor-mans version of Uniswap
  • Not that this wasn’t already known, but Uniswap out performs Sushiswap in a myriad of metrics
  • This incorporates ETH swaps, in both total volume and transaction count
• Aave has gone quiet since it burst onto the scene in 2019
  • Aave was one of the first AMMs on Ethereum, but high transaction fees and the lack of a user friendly experience likely had to do with its fall from glory
  • It is clear that there are not may advanced traders on Aave, as not many users chose to swap out of Ethereum when compared to more complex protocols such as Thorchain
  • Most clear and most obviously, Aave is the least popular swap method on this list. Maybe a rebound is in sight!