This is issue #70 of the on-chain analytics newsletter that reaches more than 10k crypto investors every week 📈

This week our contributor analysts cover DEXs: Balancer, 1inch Network, 0x, Uniswap, and Thorchain.

• Since Balancer V2’s smart contracts were quietly deployed to Ethereum mainnet two weeks ago, preliminary activity has shown notable improvements in gas efficiency for swaps. As we near public launch (which includes the V2 front-end release), early data points indicate a median gas per swap of 103K in Balancer V2, compared to 153K in Balancer V1— a 33% improvement. Due to V2's single-vault architecture, efficiency in multi-swap transactions (which require only two token transfers) is further improved.

• Flash swapping— arbitrage without any upfront capital, made possible in Balancer V2— was spotted in the wild (by a user who should consider calibrating their gas estimates to be profitable). This activity was apparently done manually, with no signs yet of bots capitalizing on the opportunity.

• Over the past 17 weeks, the 80% BAL / 20% WETH liquidity pool on Balancer V1 gave liquidity providers some of the highest yields in DeFi— an average APY over 75%. These rates may fluctuate before re-stabilizing as liquidity begins to migrate to Balancer V2. This is not a promise of future returns.

• The 1inch Lab has released the fastest and most advanced DEX aggregation protocol in the market. In version 3, gas fees have been substantially reduced thanks to assembly code optimization. The feature applies to swaps using Uniswap v2 and its forks, such as Sushiswap. Swapping ETH for DAI on 1inch, for example, requires 10.3% less gas than the same trade on Uniswap and 4.9% less than on 0x.

• The 1inch Wallet for iOS allows anyone to swap tokens at the best rates possible. Two days after launch the 1inch Wallet had already reached 16K+ downloads. The wallet offers a balanced mix of user experience, versatility and security. Users get access to substantial liquidity across 50+ sources on Ethereum and 20+ on BSC.

• 1inch’s swap API for BSC is an aggregating solution offering the chain’s users high transaction speed and the best swap rates on the market. The API finds the most efficient token swap paths, splitting swaps between different protocols and even different market depths within one protocol.

• On March 18th, 0x API launched on BSC and so far has relayed over 155k trades, accounting for $478M in trade volume. On a peak day (Apr 18th), Dodo users alone accounted for $70m+ in trade volume. It now provides 14 liquidity sources to 7 applications. The expansion also attracted 25k new users with the 0x API now reaching ~85k MAU.

• RFQ volume share on 0x API increased from 2.5% (Jan) to 27% (Apr). This indicates that market makers quote prices become more and more competitive compared to on-chain AMM liquidity. For the 3 most popularly traded pairs among MMs (WETH-DAI/WBTC/USDC), the RFQ system accounts for ~40% of the total volume.

• 0x DAO launched in April with ~2M ZRX(~$4M) in the community treasury to incentivize governance. In the first week of May the 0x API peak day hit ATH at over half a billion on both the 3rd ($519m) and the 4th ($538m). 0x v2 protocol volume also doubled to ~$200M daily, driven by 1inch and Tokenlon.

• Uniswap v3 did over $200M in trading volume on launch day, reaching $280M at the time of writing. There have been 29.8k trades by over 12k unique users. 581 different pools have been created on v3 with over $400M TVL. v3 currently accounts for ~20% of Uniswap trading volume. The majority of markets have been created with a 0.3% trading fee so far. The latest iteration of Uniswap is averaging ~800 trades/hour by ~500 unique traders per hour. This is ~15% of comparable figures for Uniswap v2.

• Of the $411M value locked in v3, ~$298M of this value sits in the top 10 pools. Of this, ~$251M is provided in markets with a .3% trading fee and ~$46M at a .05% fee. ~$78M of liquidity is in stable-stable pools. ETH is the most popular asset at $166M TVL followed by USDC, USDT, and Dai.

• The top 4 liquidity pools are ETH-USDC, ETH-USDT, ETH-UNI, and ETH-WBTC. Most pools are following a semi-normal distribution centered on the current price. ERC20-ETH pairs show a wider spread than ETH-stable pairs. Stable-stables show an even sharper liquidity spike centered on current exchange rates.