Ultrasound Money data reveals that there has been a surge in activity in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, with Uniswap leading the line.

In the past week, Uniswap-related activities led the ETH “burn” leaderboard on Ultrasound Money, flipping OpenSea, the world’s leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. This development is despite OpenSea coming on top of Uniswap last month.

The flipping in the short term could indicate that users are beginning to funnel their activities and funds to Uniswap, and by extension, DeFi protocols in Ethereum. 

It should be noted that the funds burnt are from coins passed through the Uniswap Universal router. It is one of the two smart contracts, together with Permit2, released by Uniswap Labs, the team behind the DEX, in late November 2022. 

The Uniswap Universal Router combines ERC20 and NFT swapping into a single swap router. When users integrate Permit2, a smart contract that allows “token approvals to be shared and managed across different applications,” they can swap multiple fungible ERC-20 tokens and NFTs in a single transaction, saving gas fees. Uniswap launched NFT trading on November 30, 2022.

OpenSea’s monthly trading volumes peaked at over $4.85 billion in January 2021 before dropping to as low as $125 million in January 2023. Despite the contraction, the NFT marketplace was able to outperform the Uniswap Universal Router in the number of ETH it has burned. 

As an illustration, Ethereum burnt 5,695 ETH in the last 30 days. Meanwhile, Uniswap’s activities resulted in 5,175 ETH being burnt in the same period.

However, the DEX, Uniswap, has been the most active platform in the last week, surpassing OpenSea.

The Ethereum network overhauled its gas auctioning system, introducing burning after implementing EIP-1559. With this, more ETH would be destroyed based on activity. 

Uniswap is the largest multi-token DEX in crypto, allowing users in multiple EVM-compatible platforms to swap tokens without an intermediary. The exchange launched in late 2018 and currently manages over $4 billion of assets, emerging as the sixth largest DeFi protocol, trailing Lido Finance, Aave, MakerDAO, Curve—a stablecoin-only DEX, and Convex Finance.

Dune data shows that Uniswap commands 70% of the total ETH DEX market share. It has a weekly trading volume of $8,570,219,237, flipping Curve, which, as mentioned earlier, has a larger total value locked (TVL).

Despite the larger TVL, Curve’s trading volumes are comparatively lower than Uniswap at $1,260,371,355. DeFiLlama statistics reveal that PancakeSwap, with a TVL of $2.59 billion, is the second most active DEX. It commands average weekly volumes of $2.18 billion.

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