Overview of analysis:

Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, refers to a set of applications that can perform important financial matters such as receiving loans and financial transactions in a decentralized manner without the need for intermediaries. In other words, DeFi is not a project, but an ecosystem of hundreds of different projects, all of which provide decentralized financial services. The important part of DeFi programs are swap or exchange applications.

Let’s track the DeFi Swap activity through various blockchains. The goal is to create a dashboard to let people compare Swap activity and popular assets across chains.

This dashboard divided into the following parts:

• Comparison of swap activity on various chains
  • The General comparison
  • The overtime analysis
  • Swap platforms across various chains
  • Swapper distribution on various chains
• Popular and rising assets across chains
  • Popular assets on each chain and over all chains
  • Popular swap pairs on each chain and over all chains
• Detailed investigation on DeFi swap activity and popular assets across chains

This tool called parameter based analyzer and reader can set various parameters:

• Time period→ Default set to the past 6 months (180 days)
• Time Basis→ Default set to week

Methodology:

The data provided by Flipside has been used to handle this analysis. To handle this investigation the following steps have been passed as below:

• Step 1: Find out the swap activity on each chain
  • Blockchains→ Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, Near, Flow, Thorchain and Osmosis
  • Used table→ Blockchain.core.ez_dex_swaps
• Step 2: Determine the swap activity on chains
  • General metrics→ Count of swap and traders- Swap platforms, Average swap volume, Average swap count and volume per day, Median of swap volume, Average swap volume per block
  • Over time metrics→ General metrics overtime, Cumulative analysis, 7-day moving average swap volume in USD, Median and average swap volume in USD
• Step 3: Swap platforms across chains
  • Try metrics of the previous steps
• Step 4: Swapper Distribution
  • Swapper distribution by swap count and volume in USD
  • Swapper distribution over days of week
• Step 5: Rising and popular assets on various chains
  • Most popular assets by→ Volume in USD, Count of swaps and etc.
  • Most popular Swap pairs
• Step 6: By aggregating the outcomes of the steps and deep dive into the blockchains, draw a conclusion about the Swap activity across chain.

About DeFi swap programs

The word DeFi is derived from the English combination Decentralized Finance, which means decentralized finance. This concept is used to describe any decentralized financial service, from digital currency to blockchain, and its main goal is to eliminate various middlemen in cryptocurrency transactions. In fact, DeFi is a subset of decentralized applications (DApp) that specifically focuses on smart contract-based finance.

Decentralized exchanges (DEX) are peer-to-peer markets where digital currency traders conduct their transactions directly without entrusting the management of their funds to an intermediary or third party. These transactions are facilitated through the use of self-executing agreements or smart contracts. DEXs were created to eliminate the need for any authority to monitor and authorize transactions made on a particular exchange. Decentralized exchanges enable peer-to-peer (P2P) trading of cryptocurrencies.

One of the most important problems related to decentralized exchange is low liquidity. The most important problem of low liquidity is limiting the possibility of buying and selling. Statistics show that due to people's interest and trust in centralized exchanges, liquidity in centralized digital currency exchange is currently more than decentralized digital currency exchange.

Part 1: Comparison of swap activity on various chains

Part 1-1: General comparison on selected time period

Findings:

The general comparison of swap activity on various chains over the selected time period is summarized as below:

• The Ethereum chain has been dominated the DeFi swap activity from all aspects like volume, count of swaps and unique traders as expected.
• The Near blockchain has the highest count for swap platforms among chains.
• Flow and Solana have highest share of swaps related to stablecoins compared to other blockchains.
• The Thorchain has the highest count of swaps per swappers and it shown that this chain is more conservative than other chains.

Part 1-2: Time base comparison by selected parameters

Findings:

The time base investigation over the selected time frame and time basis is summarized as:

• The over time analysis validate the domination of Ethereum chain on swap activity over other selected chains.
• In some date, other chains like Solana and Thorchain experienced spikes o nsale volume and count as can be seen.
• Median of swap volume in USD reveals that Thorchain has lead this metrics more than other chains over the selected time period.

Part 1-3: Comparison of Swap Platforms on various chians

Findings:

The swap platforms on various chain have been evaluated in this part:

• As said earlier, the Near blockchain has the highest count of swap platforms compared to other chains.
• The Uniswap-V3 on Ethereum is dominated the swap volume over various swap platforms across chains.
• The average swap volume in USD shown the superiority of Curve finance over the swap platforms across chains.
• By the use of the outcomes of this sections, the most popular swap platform on each blockchain has been determined from the volume of swaps in USD and count of swaps aspects.

Part 1-4: Comparison of swapper distribution on various chains

• This sub-section has been used to identify the distribution of swaps and unique traders across chains.
• According to the consequences of this section, the most dominant group of unique swappers due to the swap size in USD has been determined.
• Also, the swap behavior of traders over various blockchains according to the count of swaps has been drawn.
• On of the important part of investigation over DeFi swap activity is identifying the swap time for various chains. For this purpose, the swap activity over the days of week for various chains has been underestimated to find the most popular swap times.

Part 2: Popular and rising assets across chains

Part 2-1: Popular assets on each chain and over all chains

Part 2-2: Popular swap pairs on each chain and over all chains

Summary of outcomes:

The outcomes related to the popular and rising assets across chains are summarized as below:

• Two various aspects have been determined to identify the most popular and rising assets across chains including: Volume in USD and count of swaps
• The most popular assets used in DeFi swap activity across chains are WETH, USDC and USDT as can be seen.
• Also, the most popular swap pairs on each chain have been determined based on volume of swaps in USD and count of swap.
• The WETH-USDC has been dominated the most popular swap pair by volume of swap in USD, count of swaps and unique traders over all chains.
• Due to the domination of Ethereum chain on DeFi swap activity across chains, the most popular assets and swap pairs are assets related to this blockchain.

Part 3-1: DeFi Swapping Activity Across Chains

The detailed investigation about each chain can be found via the following Link:

In this dashboard, the more precise investigation about the Swap activity on various chains have been drawn.

Also, this dashboard is considered as parameter base dashboard and reader can set three various parameters:

• Blockchain→ Default set to Algorand
• Time period→ Default set to the past 6 months (180 days)
• Time Basis→ Default set to week

Part 3-2: Popular and Rising Assets Across chains

The analysis related to the rising and popular assets on various chains has been investigated through the following Link:

According to this dashboard, the most popular assets used for “Swapped for” , “Swapped to“ and “Swap pairs” can be determined based on these metrics:

• Share of each asset or swap pair on selected chain
• Swap volume in USD
• Swap count
• Unique traders

This dashboard is parameter base dashboard too and reader can set the chain, time period and time basis.

Conclusion:

By considering the consequences of previous parts the following conclusion has been drawn:

• The trend of application of DeFi swap programs on various networks has been growing due to the market situation and we can see spikes on special dates.
• The supremacy of the Ethereum network is undeniable from the point of view of swap volume as well as count of swaps and unique traders.
• Thorchain network is in the second place of DeFi swap activity from volume of swaps in USD across chains.
• The domination of stablecoins on the various network could not be ignored and USDC as a leading stablecoin on crypto universe has the highest share across chains, which can be seen in the results.
• Considering the importance of DeFi swap activity and its popularity among users, all networks are trying to provide better opportunities with lowest slippage fee to gain a larger share of the market.

Useful links:

• DeFi programs
• Decentralized Exchange
• Swap on crypto universe

Author:

Credited by MZG

Discord handle: m.zamani#0361

Twitter handle: @GargariZamani

Part 3: Detailed investigation on DeFi swap activity and popular assets across chains