Methodolgy

Introduction

What is Curve

Curve is a popular exchange with a focus on swaps between similar & more stable assets as a way of minimising the risk of impermanent loss, this has led to the protocol being associated with swaps between different stablecoins. With fees of 0.04% for swaps it offers some of the lowest fees for swapping on a decentralised exchange.

Conclusion

Swap volume on Uniswap has generally exceeded the swap volume seen on Curve with the volume on Uniswap regularlly exceeding a million.

Interestingly although swap numbers are low in the chart above this one in the Curver pool there have been a number of days where Curve volume has been in the millions.

Daily swaps on Uniswap exceed those on Curve with their being a number of days when swaps a 3x greater on Uniswap. Curve swaps have spent the majority of days in the single digits, while Uniswap has only had 16 days where the number of swaps have been in the single digits.

Curve leads on this chart with many more daily distinct wallets than Uniswap, this could be as a result of the extra asset in their pool when compared to Uniswaps.

Here we can see that Uniswap has a much larger amount of swaps in it's stable coin pool with the number of swaps being over 1000 on most days, with a peak of 2750 swaps on February the 24th. The number of swaps in the curve pool are much lower with a peak of 332. We see an increase from 570 the day with which the lower fees were implemented to 1604 two days later a 181% increase.

The Data

• Analyse the daily number of swaps between USDC - DAI on Uniswap and the daily number of swaps between DAI - USDC- USDT on Curves 3 asset pool.

• Examine the daily volume USDC between USDC - DAI on Uniswap and compare that to the daily volume of swaps between DAI - USDC - USDT on Curves 3 asset pool.

• Visualise the daily distinct wallets swapping on the USDC - DAI pool on Uniswap and compare that to the daily distinct wallets on the DAI - USDC - USDT 3 asset pool on Curve.

• Evaluate the daily number of swaps between Eurs - USDC on Uniswap and Eurs - SEurs on Curve.

• Review the daily volume between Eurs - USDC on Uniswap and Eurs - SEurs on Curve.

• Investigate the average gas fees weekly on swaps made on Eurs - USDC on Uniswap and Eurs - SEurs on Curve.

After looking extensively through the Curve pools and the Uniswap pools I couldn't find liquidity pools that matched with Uniswap on Curve that had any volume or a significant TVL. This is partially due to Curves unique pools where 3 assets can be deposited & swapped, it also looks as if liquidity providers may have chosen the Dex with the most swaps in order to get higher returns, a classic case of supply and demand.

There is meant to be a EURS - USDC pool on Curve.fi but I couldn't find this using queries on Flipside so I have chosen the closest assets I could find.

Here we see that gas fees are cheaper on Unisawp that over time gas fees have become cheaper on Uniswap, even more cheaper than Curve. With Curves gas fees being over double those on Uniswap on January 10th and January 31st. There have been a few days where average gas fees have been higher on uniswap on Dec 6th, 13th, Jan 17th, March 21st and April 18th, never being more than 47% more than on curve, and more often than not being within a range of 18% greater when fees are higher.

We see an increase of over 940% from the launch of the lower stablecoins fees on November 13th where volume stood at 31 million below curves 64 million, to 323 million on Novemeber 16th. Since then the daily volume on Uniswap has mostly exceeded daily volume on Curve, with the only days where Curve has exceeded Uniswaps volume on Jan 9th with 319 Million to Uniswaps 84 million, January 29th with 792 million in volume to Uniswaps 159 million.

Uniswap and Curve are both popular decentralised exchanges which gained popularity on the Ethereum blockchain. In 2016 Vitalik one of the co-founders of Ethereum made a suggestion for an automated market maker in a Reddit post he explores the risk of impermanent loss, with early discussions of price impact. Both Uniswap and Curve operate in a similar manner to this initial vision of an exchange with some refinement over time.

What is Uniswap

Uniswap is a popular exchange with a range of assets to swap between, with users able to create pools between assets of their choosing. Uniswap recently implemented a lower fee structure with stablecoins being able to access a lower fee of 0.5% on swaps.

Dapradar points out that while Etheruem has seen a reduction in marketcap stablecoins have seen an increase in their growth on Uniswap, with the reduced fee structure coming into place before this article was shared in February.

Overall when comparing the data we can see that Uniswap leads in all of the charts apart from the comparison between daily distinct wallets on USDC DAI and DAI/USDC/USDT. Considering there are more options to swap between on the Curve DAI/USDC/USDT pool it's impressive to see Uniswap outperform Curve on daily number of swaps and daily volume. Uniswap outperforms Curve on all measures with the EURS pools, having lower gas fees, higher daily volume and a higher number of swaps. Impressively on the Eurs pools gas on Uniswap has lowered over time, which could be attractive to investors who would like to invest in the stablecoin. It seems as if Uniswap has benefited from the lower fees with increased volume as highlighted on the daily volume USDC - Dai chart.