Avalanche Swaps vs Transfers (Redux)
Introduction
-
In this analysis, You will read about USDC on the Avalanche chain. I’m looking for USDC shares in Swaps, Transfers, Mints, and Burns.
-
So I went through USDC on Avalanche and analyzed these parameters:
-
Users
-
Transactions
-
Total/Average/Median/max USDC amounts
-
Mints and Burn
Analyzed by Hess - Reading Time Almost 8 Min
What is Avalanche?
- Avalanche is a platform for creating custom blockchain networks and decentralized applications (dApps). Created by Ava Labs, the Avalanche crypto platform is one of many projects seeking to unseat Ethereum as the blockchain ecosystem's most widely utilized smart contract platform.
Users Breakdown
- A large number of users had only 1 transaction that USDC was involved in Swaps and Transfers. Also, For both activities, the large group of users swapped or transferred 100-1K USDC.
- The second large group of users had 2 transactions involving USDC. For Transfer users, A large number of users transferred 1K-10K USDC; for Swap users, A large number of users swapped 10-100 USDC.
New Swappers and Transfer addresses
- Overall, Avalanche has 95K new USDC transfer addresses and 65K USDC swappers since July 2022. The average number of new USDC swappers is 405 unique wallets per day and nearly 600 unique transfer addresses. Since August, The total daily number of new users decreased, but Since October, The total daily number of new users increased. There were more transfer address that new USDC swappers.
Compare Avalanche USDC shares with other chains
To compare USDC shares better, I eliminated the Ethereum chain from my findings and compared USDC shares on Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, BSC, and Avalanche.
- Polygon has the highest share of USDC transactions in comparison to other chains. Among these chains, Avalanche has the lowest USDC transactions and shares. Over time, The USDC shares on Avalanche decreased more than others. Between July and August, The daily share of USDC on Avalanche was 5-10% but reached below 5% in November.
- In Total, Polygon, with 49.8% of transactions, had the highest number of USDC transactions. The second top chain was Optimism, with 20% of transactions. With 4.9% of transactions, Avalanche had the lowest shares among these chains.
- Based on The volume, After The FTX crash, The total daily USDC amount increased in all chains. Polygon with 76B US dollars USDC is in the first place and Arbitrum with 29B US dollars in the last place.
Mint and Burn
- Over the last 6 months, The total daily number of mint and burn transactions didn’t change too much if we ignore the Burn transactions in late July. Overall, The total daily number of Burn Tranasctions was higher than mint. 74% of transactions were burn and 26% of transactions were mint.

USDC Vs. USDC.e
-
Circle customers are able to mint native Avalanche USDC from the Circle Account and Circle APIs. Similar to other native USDC tokens on other blockchains, you can deposit Avalanche USDC back into a Circle Account and off-ramp to fiat currency seamlessly.
USDC.e on Avalanche is a "bridged form of Ethereum USDC" that was bridged from the Ethereum blockchain via the Avalanche Bridge. For this reason, USDC.e is not the same as native USDC. Circle products do not support USDC.e. You cannot send USDC.e to a Circle deposit address. To elaborate, it is not possible to use USDC.e in the Circle APIs, nor deposit USDC.e into a Circle Account and off-ramp back to fiat currency.
To off-ramp back to fiat currency with USDC.e, you would need to "unbridge" the USDC.e back to the Ethereum blockchain via the Avalanche Bridge. After the "unbridging", you would end up with native USDC on Ethereum ("Ethereum USDC"). At that point, you would be able to deposit the Ethereum USDC into your Circle Account and off-ramp to fiat currency. You could also deposit the Ethereum USDC into your Circle Account and withdraw the corresponding amount of Avalanche USDC to an Avalanche external address.
Full Analysis
Swaps Vs. Transfers
I mentioned that USDC and USDC.e are different tokens. In this dashboard, all charts are based on USDC.
- First, let’s examine the total daily number of Swappers and Transfer addresses and their transactions.
- At first glance, I can see both activities had the same pattern. I mean, when the transfer address increased, Swappers increased too, and vice versa.
- The highest number of users was between July and the middle of August. After that time, the Users of both activities decreased. The lowest number of users was in October. Again, After October, The total daily number of users in both activities increased.
- 58.4% of USDC users transferred their USDC, and 41.6% swapped. The average number of swappers were 2.8K per day, and 4.1K transfer address per day. Almost 1.5x higher than swappers.
Because the total number of users and transactions are similar to each other, I show the total number of transactions differently. You can see the daily share of transactions per activity.
- I can say that the daily share of swaps and transfers didn’t change too much. Since July 2022, The daily share of swaps has been 30-40%, and Transfer transactions have been 60-70% until November 13.
- Recently, The daily share of transfer transactions increased above 70%, and Swap transactions reached 28%.
- Almost 63.8% of transactions were Transfer and 36.2% of transactions were swapped. The average number of swap transactions was 8.5K per day, and the average number of transfer transactions was 15K per day. Almost 2x higher than swaps.
Until now, We examined the total and the average number of users and transactions per Swap and Transfer. Now, It’s time to examine the USDC amounts
- Like previous charts, The total daily transferred USDC amount was higher than the swap volume. On some days, The amount of transferred USDC became 2x higher than swapped USDC volume.
- The highest amount of USDC was swapped and transferred between July and August. After that decreased. Especially the total swapped USDC.
- 72.6% of USDC amounts were in Transfer transactions, and 27.4% of USDC amounts were in swap transactions. On the other side, The average transfer USDC amount was 286M per day, and the average swapped USDC volume was 108M US dollars per day.
The average amount of USDC in the previous charts was the average of USDC since July 2022 per day. But the below charts are based on the average amount of USDC per transaction.
- The average swapped USDC was 6.6K US dollars, and The average transferred USDC was 11K US dollars. In the middle of July, There were some days that the average swap volume increased and took transfer place but overall, The average of transferred USDC was much higher than the swapped USDC. Since October 1, The average swap and transferred USDC volume decreased and reached almost 1.7K USDC.
- The median swapped USDC was 128 USDC, and the median transferred USDC was 104 USDC. In this parameter, Swapped USDC was higher than Transfered USDC.
Besides the average USDC amounts, I extracted the average 7/30/60 days moving USDC amounts. From July to August, The average moving USDC amounts of Swaps and transfers were similar to each other, but after that, both decreased, and the difference between swaps and transfers increased.
The highest amount of USDC burnt on July 28 which was 475M USDC. If we ignore that day, The total daily mint and burn USDC amounts didn’t change. The total burn USDC was 1.7B US dollars and the total Minted USDC was 1.2B USD dollars.
The average minted USDC is 800K USDC, and the average burnt USDC is 424K USDC. There were so many ups and downs in the average minted and burnt USDC, but the average is what I mentioned.
Conclusion
- USDC is one of the most popular tokens in the Crypto world. As you have seen, This token is popular on Avalanche too. USDC was in more than 3M Transfers and Swap Transactions in the last 6 months. More users used USDC in their transfers in comparison to Swaps. The average swapped USDC was 6.6K, and the average transferred USDC was 11K. About 2x higher than swaps. However, In comparison to other chains, The lowest number of USDC transactions was on Avalanche. Also, Less volume went through this token on Avalanche.
- Based on The daily mint and burn, The average minted USDC was 424K, and the average burnt USDC was 800K.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
ALL CODES AND CONTENTS WERE WRITTEN BY HESS.