Decentralized exchanges (DEX) Uniswap and Curve reached lifetime high trading volumes over the weekend as traders hurried to exchange their token holdings, particularly USD Coin (USDC).
This surge in activity highlights the growing popularity of decentralized exchanges that rely on smart contracts instead of middlemen to provide financial services to users.
During a 24-hour period from Saturday to Sunday, Uniswap processed nearly $12 billion in trading volume. Dune Analytics data revealed that USDC pools for wrapped ether (WETH), tether (USDT), and dai (DAI) processed $15 billion in volume over a seven-day period, with most of the activity taking place from Friday to Sunday.
This generated over $8 million in fees for the Uniswap protocol, adding to Uniswap Labs’ revenue and a smaller percentage paid out to liquidity providers.
Meanwhile, stablecoin swapping tool Curve recorded almost $8 billion in trading volume. One of its popular pools was imbalanced as traders rushed to exchange USDC for other tokens.
The reason for this surge in activity was the depegging of Circle Internet Financial’s USDC stablecoin from its intended $1 price on Friday night. This was caused by Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), where Circle parked over $3.3 billion in treasury assets, being shut down by regulators.
However, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) surged by 10% in the past 24 hours to retrace all the weekend losses on Monday.
This occurred as USDC-issuer Circle announced on Sunday that it would cover all shortfalls in reserves, and Federal regulators said SVB depositors would have access to all funds on Monday morning after the U.S. open.
