What is the Question?🚨

With the collapse of FTX, do users want to remove their crypto from centralized exchanges and use decentralized options for trading? Examine the following:

• How have the number of DEX users changed? Are there more unique users?
• Have the number of swaps changed?
• Has the volume (in USD) changed?

Analyzed Topics:

1. Algorand & Osmosis & NEAR & Flow & Solana & Avalanche & BSC & Polygon & Ethereum & Optimism & Arbitrum Swap Activity Comparison Since November 1st

2. Ethereum’s Sushiswap & Optimism’s Velodrome & Solana’Orca & Osmosis’s DEX Swap Activity Comparison

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Introduction🚩

What are DEXs?

DEXs are decentralized crypto exchanges that offer access to digital assets without an intermediary. Instead of relying on a company to fill and record crypto trades, DEXs offer peer-to-peer (P2P) token swaps using blockchain technology. More specifically, DEXs use smart contracts to execute trades.

More Info

What is FTX?

FTX is a Bahamian cryptocurrency exchange. FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in The Bahamas. As of February 2022, the exchange has over one million users. FTX operates FTX.US, a separate exchange available to US residents.

Method⚡

In this dashboard, i take a look at what happened to FTX in early November and what did users do after that incident. Did they move to DEXs or not. At first i compared top blockchains swapping activity since the beginning of November 2022 until now (December 7th), after that i went more specific into the topic and analyze 4 popular DEXs from 4 blockchains: Sushiswap from Ethereum, Velodrome from Optimism, Orca from Solana and Osmosis DEX and compare them together in terms of swapping activity since November 1st.

For getting the needed data, i mainly used Flipsidecrypto databases.

For analyzing the 4 DEXs that i mentioned, I used ==Ethereum.Sushi== database for Sushiswap, ==Optimism.Velodrome== for Velodrome, ==“Solana.core.fact_swaps”== for Orca and filtered its data in that table with swap_program= ‘Orca‘ and at last i used ==Osmosis.core== database to extract Osmosis swapping activity.

I analyzed all of the data since ==2022-11-01== , FTX collapse happened on ==November 7th until November 10th== and this dashboard made on ==2022-12-07==

What Happened to FTX?

Alameda specialized in big bets on crypto companies. To finance those bets, SBF courted investors with promises of high returns and zero risk, which sounds dumb in retrospect but plenty of rich people believed it at the time. FTX was, until recently, the world’s fifth-largest exchange. It had its own token, FTT, which functioned like a loyalty program for customers, giving them perks like discounted transaction fees. But FTT was also bought and sold like a normal token, once trading for as much as $80. (Today, it’s around $1.50.) FTX minted tons of this highly valuable yet extremely imaginary money—there are currently about 300 million FTT tokens in circulation—and reportedly used it as collateral to take out loans for Alameda. This was dangerous because if the price of FTT fell below a certain level, it would leave Alameda unable to pay back its lenders. (When the entire crypto market slumped earlier this year, people were mystified to see FTX bail out several failing companies. SBF may have been trying to prevent those companies from selling their FTT at a discount.)

In early November, CoinDesk reported that two-fifths of Alameda’s $14.6 billion balance sheet was held in FTT, sparking panic among FTX customers, who were aware that problems at Alameda could mean problems for the exchange. Changpeng Zhao (a.k.a. CZ), the CEO of rival exchange Binance, dumped 23 million FTT, sending its price into free fall. Twisting the knife, CZ announced a tentative deal to buy FTX, then abandoned it after finding too many holes in the company’s finances. One reason for those holes, according to Reuters: SBF had created a secret backdoor in FTX’s bookkeeping system that allowed him to move depositors’ money off the exchange to Alameda without alerting customers or most of his own employees. Oh, and another plot twist: Turns out SBF had given himself a $1 billion personal loan out of Alameda’s coffers.

More Info

Findings👀

• In the above charts, i showed swapping activity of top blockchains since the beginning of November until present December 7th.
• The FTX collapsed mainly happened on November 7th and as we see, the chains especially Solana recorded their highest number of swaps on that day since November 1st.
• Solana is in the lead in swapping stats in early days of November because this project was one of the main FTX/Alameda wallets assets and after their collapse, Solana recorded a slight collapse too and its token price (SOL) dropped almost 50% after that incident.
• Most of November swap activity were in first 10 days of November around FTX’s collapse day on Nov 7th.
• Users started to swap their assets around FTX’s collapse day, the assets that were in FTX/Alameda wallets like SOL and much more.
• After November 10th and Dropdown of Solana on both swapping activity and price, Ethereum went on the lead of Swap activity again and accounted most of the swapping activity on almost every day after November 10th.

Findings👀

• Majority of Solana number of swaps recorded before FTX collapse, the number of solana swaps that recorded after FTX collapse is still more than other chains.

• Ethereum number of unique swappers reached 1M after FTX collapse in past 35 days.

• Except Solana, other chains recorded more swap activity after FTX collapse than before it.

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Algorand & Osmosis & NEAR & Flow & Solana & Avalanche & BSC & Polygon & Ethereum & Optimism & Arbitrum Swap Activity Comparison Since November 1st

Findings👀

• In the pie charts above we see that Solana recorded a huge number of 51M swaps in past 35 days and as i talked earlier, most of them has recorded on the days around FTX’s collapse, in early November. In terms of number of swaps ethereum is in the second place with almost 2.9M swaps over time. Solana is accounting over 80% of swaps share among top chains since the beginning of November which is crazy!
• Ethereum is in the first place of number of unique swappers with over 1.2M unique swappers and accounting almost 32% of the share followed by Arbitrum in the second place with over 600K unique swappers and Polygon in the third place with over 540K.
• It is interesting that Solana is accounting over 80% of swaps share while it is in the 7th place of number of unique swappers with only 360K unique swappers.

2. Ethereum’s Sushiswap & Optimism’s Velodrome & Solana’Orca & Osmosis’s DEX Swap Activity Comparison

Findings👀

• In this section, i compared 4 DEXs from 4 different blockchains to compare since the beginning of November.
• We can see a massive spike on number swaps, swappers and swap volume after November 7th, from November 8th to 10th, the days around FTX’s collapse.
• Around that days swapping activity has increased between these DEXs and most of them belong to Osmosis and Velodrome in terms of number of swaps and swappers.
• But in terms of USD Swap Volume and average USD swap volume, Sushiswap is in the lead for sure with over 800M total volume and almost 80K average volume both in USD since November 1st.
• Velodrome recorded the highest number of swaps and Osmosis had highest number of swappers in past 35 days so far.
• Orca itself is a pretty big DEX in solana network but when we compare it to these DEXs, its not that big.
• Osmosis is newer than all of them but from what we observe here, we can see it is growing so fast and even recorded more number of swaps than the popular and big Sushiswap Since the beginning of November.
• It seems users decided to use Osmosis because its low fees and stuff like that.

Conclusion💡

• FTX’s collapse put a massive effect on the whole crypto market especially on Solana.
• Users lost their trust to CEXs after FTX’s incident and started to move into DEXs.
• The days around FTX’s collapse were the hottest day for swapping activity among chains.
• Solana recorded the highest swapping activity in early November.
• DEXs like Velodrome and Osmosis were people’s popular destinations after FTX.
• DEXs will get more popular in the near future because of FTX mess and users started to lost their trust to CEXs slowly after the beef between top exchanges like Binance and FTX.

Author: Sbhn_NP

Discord : Sbhn_NP#8717

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Thanks for your time!