Try Quests to earn cryptoDeFi Users vs. Newbies
Are Uniswap users coming from other Defi projects? We want to understand if we are seeing a flow of users and tokens from other similar protocols or if many of the users are new to the DeFi ecosystem. To solve this challenge, you need to answer the following questions: - What is the USD-equivalent breakdown of tokens other than UNI in Uniswap users’ wallets/addresses? How has this changed over time? - Of users who have deposited in other pools/protocols, how much of their total wallet is UNI (share of wallet)? Has that changed over time?
Sushiswap Liquidity Providers
This chart shows the percentage of UNI tokens in the wallets of Sushiswap liquidity providers. Compared to the chart above, it is remarkably similar. Overall, Sushi users appear to hold a slightly lower proportion than Uni users, although the difference is marginal. In some weeks, the proportion is actually higher. This suggests that Liquidity Providers, regardless of their choice of exchange, place a similar value on their UNI tokens.
Comparing Liquidity Providers - Uniswap vs Sushiswap
Uniswap Liquidity Providers
The following chart shows the percentage of UNI tokens in the wallets of Uniswap liquidity providers. UNI token holding in this group steadily increased through to March 2021, where it peaked at 5% of wallet share. It has decreased since and now sits at 1.4%. Compare this to the dex users above, it is clear that liquidity providers are far more likely to hold UNI tokens. This makes sense - they have tokens invested earning fees on the protocol and holding the UNI token gives them a say in the governance of the platform.
Sushiswap Dex Users
The next chart looks at the same measure as above, but centres on Sushiswap users. We can see a very similar pattern to the Uniswap chart above, but the absolute numbers are 30-50% smaller. It seems that Uniswap dex users are more likely to hold UNI tokens than Sushiswap dex users.
Comparing Token Breakdown
In this analysis, we will look at Defi dex users and compare their wallets to see if there is a difference between Uniswap users and those on other exchanges. We will begin by looking at those users who do dex swaps, and then examine users who provide liquidity. Dex swap users are those who have entries in the Flipside dex_swaps table, and Liquidity Providers are those users who have "Mint" events recorded against pools in the dex_liquidity_pools table. At the moment, Flipside only records Uniswap (V2 and V3) and Sushiswap in the dex_swaps and dex_liquidity_pools tables, but given that these two platforms account for over 60% of defi swap value (plus aggregator swaps), this should be representative. The time period for the analysis is 1st Jan 2021 through to 2nd July 2021.
Comparing Dex Users - Uniswap vs Sushiswap
There are thousands of different tokens in user wallets, so only the most common ones are shown. A number of rollups were done to make the graph more readable: USD stablecoins, Compound cTokens and then all other tokens (the long tail).
Uniswap Dex Users
The following chart shows the wallet breakdown of the Uniswap dex users. Wallets are dominated by WETH (Ether wrapped as an ERC20 token) and USD Stablecoins, with a smaller portion of other tokens. UNI tokens account for a very small proportion, which we will examine more closely later. Note the move from other tokens & WETH into stables during May when the price of crypto assets crashed.
UNI Wallet Share
To drill down into UNI token holding behaviour, we will look in detail at the USD percentage of UNI tokens in each holders wallets. This is across the same four groups as before (Dex users & Liquidity Providers, Uniswap & Sushiswap users). The user definitions and timeframes are also the same.
Comparing Dex Users - Uniswap vs Sushiswap
Uniswap Dex Users
The following chart shows the percentage of UNI tokens in the wallets of Uniswap dex users. There was a big jump in UNI token wallet share in early 2021, just ahead of a significant price appreciation of the token (see price reference at the end of this dashboard). Just prior to the market peak in early May, there was a significant drop in the percentage of UNI held by these users. This can partially be explained the large increase in total wallet size (see the breakdown charts above) which occurred at this time. This does not explain all the drop, and it appears that many users offloaded their UNI tokens at this point. UNI holdings have been steadily decreasing since this time, and now sit at 0.6% of holdings.
Sushiswap Dex Users
The next chart shows the wallet breakdown of the Sushiswap dex users. Note that the chart is very similar to the Uniswap users chart above. Over 80% of holdings are in either stablecoins or ETH, and the proportions of WBTC and other tokens appears to be similar between the groups as well. The total holdings are also very similar, with Uniswap users having a slightly higher balance on aggregate. Similar patterns of token migration occuring during the crash also occurred. The similarity between these groups leads me to believe that there is a high degree of overlap between them - many users probably use both exchanges.
Comparing Liquidity Providers - Uniswap vs Sushiswap
Uniswap Liquidity Providers
The following chart shows the wallet breakdown of the Uniswap liquidity providers. Note that the wallets are very different to the dex users. There is a much lower proportion of WETH and stables, and a much larger share of Compound deposit tokens (earning yield) and other coins. This indicates a more sophisticated defi user - instead of simply hodling stables and ETH, they put these assets to work earning yield. The UNI token balance still appears small in relation to other holdings.
Sushiswap Liquidity Providers
The following chart shows the wallet breakdown of the Sushiswap liquidity providers. This chart is similar to the Uniswap LP chart, indicating that there is probably a large portion of users who deposit onto both exchanges. The Sushiswap chart shows a higher proportion of WETH holdings and a lower portion of Stablecoins. UNI holdings are difficult to compare with the previous chart but we will examine that in detail in the next section.
What have we learned?
The data above shows a number of interesting insights. When the crypto price came down, we saw a trend of users rotating into out of more volatile assets into stablecoins, suggesting that they were sensitive to the USD denomination of their portfolios. We also saw that dex users tended to hold a large portion of their wallets as either WETH or stablecoins. We contrasted that with liquidity providers, who deposited their assets in yield generating protocols instead of hodling directly. We have also seen an overall downtrend in the proportion of UNI token held in wallets which seems to be independent of UNI price.
The differences between Uniswap and Sushiswap dex users was marginal in terms of types of coins held, suggesting a big overlap between these groups. Similar results were seen between the exchanges for liquidity providers. Uniswap dex users tended to hold a higher proportion of UNI in their wallets than Sushiswap users, however when comparing our LP groups we saw a much smaller difference.