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Uniswap (UNI) has become the first decentralized exchange (DEX) to reach $100 billion in cumulative trading volume as the appetite for the decentralized finance (DeFi) market continues to grow. Meanwhile, the UNI token recently set a new all-time high, with the platform now boasting about $4 billion in total value locked (TVL).
Uniswap Crosses $100B Landmark
Tweeting on Monday (Feb. 15, 2021), platform creator Hayden Adams revealed that Uniswap had surpassed $100 billion in cumulative trading volume. Uniswap is the first DEX to reach this milestone and is a further testament to the massive growth in DEX activity since the middle of 2020.
🦄 @Uniswap just became the first decentralized trading platform to process over $100b in volume – an exciting milestone for DeFi 🚀 pic.twitter.com/hUoM36aG6A
— Hayden Adams 🦄 (@haydenzadams) February 15, 2021
Uniswap’s milestone comes in exactly three months since reaching the $50 billion mark back in December 2020.
Indeed, data from crypto analytics provider Dune Analytics shows a massive spike in the Uniswap cumulative volume chart beginning in July 2020. The summer of 2020 was arguably the start of the DeFi spark with the launch of liquidity mining and governance tokens for blue chips like Compound (COMP) and Balancer (BAL) protocols.
Massive trading volumes on Uniswap and other DEX platforms like SushiSwap has triggered a huge spike in Ether (ETH) transaction costs. Gas fees are now regularly high, prompting calls for the emergence of Layer-2 (L-2) scaling solutions that will usher in cheaper transactions.
DEX Volumes Continue to Grow
According to Dune Analytics, DEX trading volume in January 2021 set a new record of about $61.6 million. February’s figures are almost halfway there, suggesting that a new monthly DEX volume record might be on the cards.
Apart from settling over $100 billion in cumulative transactions, Uniswap has also added $1 billion in TVL. As previously reported by CryptoPotato, the leading DEX platform topped $3 billion in TVL back in mid-November 2020.
According to data from DeFi aggregator DeFipulse, Uniswap is now ranked fifth in terms of TVL with about $4 billion in the total value of Ether locked on the platform. Uniswap is also the second-highest ranked DEX based on TVL, with SushiSwap less than half a billion dollars away from Uniswap’s haul.
On the token price front, UNI reached a new all-time earlier in February, but the move was met with a swift retrace that took its price below the $20 mark. The downtrend appeared to have bottomed out at $19, with UNI staging a bounce above $21 likely pushing for another assault beyond its all-time high price.
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