Conclusion

• The DUST token has extensively swapped between swappers during its lifecycle with a swaps volume of more than 30M;
• DUST has had 41K unique buyers, as well as 29K unique sellers;
• The daily swaps activity of DUST has had a steady trend since March, with a massive increase during May and June, and a recent spike in the transactions relating to the new y00ts NFT collection;
• Jupiter and Raydium are the only two DEXs that have listed the DUST token for swaps with other pairs, with Jupiter having a higher share of the total swaps compared to Raydium;
• SOL has been the dominant swap pair for DUST both for swapping from and swapping to the token;
• USDC has also been the other dominant stablecoin which paired with DUST in a considerable number of its swaps;
• The swap pairs analysis of DUST has indicated that the token has not directly been utilized in the Solana ecosystem;
• In general, the sellers sell their DUST to take a profit, or to have higher flexibility in other platforms by swapping with SOL or USDC. Buyers also buy the token to utilize that in the DeGods ecosystem itself;
• The price of DUST has heavily correlated with the price of SOL and the DeGods NFTs;
• DUST has also had high price volatility during its lifecycle;
• The majority of DUST holders have only held less than 1000 tokens;
• The holdings of large whales equilibrate the combined balance of numerous smallholders.

Methodology

The majority of the data for this analysis were collected from the fact_swaps table of the core schema of the solana database. Swaps to and from the DUST tokens were considered equal to buying and selling the token, respectively. The volumes were calculated in the DUST for most parts. The DUST holders and their distribution were measured using the fact_transfers table, and by categorizing the holders between ranges of 1000 DUST. The price of DUST was calculated using its swaps with USDC and USDC tokens and compared with the price of SOL, averaged using the fact_hourly_token_prices table of the core schema of the ethereum database, and with the DeGods NFTs sales, measured using the fact_nft_sales table.

Introduction

DUST is an SPL token on the Solana Blockchain and the native token of the entire DeGods ecosystem that fuels its operations. It has a maximum supply of 33.3M tokens with 3 having events that reduce its staking rewards by 50% each. The first and main application of DUST is to upgrade the DeGods NFTs into DeadGods. Staking DeGods or DeadGods allows the holder to earn a passive amount of DUST per day. More data on DUST and DeGods are available on the DeGods FAQ page.

In this analysis, the swaps of the DUST token, its price, and its holders have been evaluated.

Swaps

• During its lifecycle, 336K swaps have been conducted by more than 70K swappers accounting for a total volume of more than 30M DUST;
• While the number of buys and buyers has been higher than the sells and sellers, the sell volume has been slightly higher compared to the buy volume;
• The daily swaps had a steady upward trend in the first few months until they massively increased in May and June;
• After that, the number and volume of swaps, as well as the number of swappers dropped to previous low levels;
• Since late August and early September, swaps have increased to higher levels and registered their all-time high;
• The announcement of y00ts, the new NFT collection by the creators of the DeGods, has had some major and positive effects on the activity of the DUST token;
• Even on a daily scale, the buying activity has been higher compared to the number of selling.

Swap Pairs

• SOL and USDC have been the dominant swap pairs of DUST for both swapping from and to this token;
• The swaps share of SOL and USDC has been nearly two-thirds and one-third of the total for swaps from DUST, respectively;
• For swapping to DUST, the share of SOL has been higher to nearly 75% of the total, reducing the share of USDC to values less than 25%;
• Besides these two tokens, USDT is the only notable token with a share of between 1% to 2% of the swaps;
• There have been multiple other tokens as swap pairs of DUST such as DeFi protocols, NFT collections, liquid staking tokens, etc., each with only a minor share of the total swaps;
• The daily swaps behavior of DUST has indicated that SOL, in addition to USDC and USDT, has seen steady swaps on each day, while other tokens had only registered swaps occasionally;
• The swap Pairs data has demonstrated that the DUST token does not directly being utilized in the Solana ecosystem. Its holders tend to sell it for SOL or a stablecoin, to take profits, or to use those tokens on other projects instead. Also, the buyers tend to utilize the token in the DeGods ecosystem itself.

DEXs

• Among multiple DEXs on the Solana ecosystem, Jupiter and Raydium are the only DEXs that have listed the DUST token;
• While the number of swappers is almost equal on the two DEXs, the number and the volume of swaps have been higher on Jupiter, accounting for around 60% of the total swaps;
• On average, the number of swaps and the number of swappers who tend to buy DUST have been around 1.5x higher than those who prefer to sell their tokens;
• The volume of sells and buys have been almost identical to each other on both DEXs, with Jupiter having a selling volume slightly higher than its buy volume;
• Jupiter listed the DUST token one month earlier than Raydium which gave it a major boost in early adoption and swaps rate;
• From May, the number and volume of swaps massively increased and in some periods, it overtook Jupiter;
• Since then, the DUST swaps activity on both DEXs has been close to each other.

DUST Holders

• The majority of DUST holders have only held less than 100 tokens with a total share of more than 95% of the total holders;
• Balance-wise, the distribution of the DUST holdings held by its holders has had a parabolic-shape resemblance, with the holdings of whale equalizing the combined holdings of numerous smallholders;
• There are only a few holders holding a high volume of DUST, ranging from 200K to 22M tokens;
• There is an almost equal distribution of tokens between the other holders, having 10K to 50K tokens with a negligible difference;
• The DeDAO treasury has also been among the top DUST holders.

DUST Price

• According to the official documentation of the project, “the price of the DUST is not established by the project but rather by the free market”;
• During its volatile lifecycle, the price of DUST varied between sub-dollar values to its all-time high around $6;
• The comparison between the price of DUST with SOL and DeGods has indicated a direct correlation between the three;
• As the crypto market moves downward, resulting in the decrease of SOL price, the price of DUST decreases as well. As the demand for DeGods changes and moves the price of NFTs, the price of DUST also reacts accordingly;
• While there have been correlations between the number and the volume of DeGods sales, it has not been as explicit as the price of the DeGods.