Uniswap and PancakeSwap have established them self as the leading defi platforms on Ethereum and BSC.
It has been a bumpy road for the crypto industry in the last month so lets take a look how these two main apps are doing. Both of them have pushed updates, Uniswap its V3 version, and Pancake a lot of small updates.
Before going further into the post I just want to note here that while these comparison THIS VS THAT are fun and interesting, the overall sentiment (and data) is that we are still early on in this space so there is enough space for growth for all the platforms and much more new ones that will come out in the future.
The pro and cons of these two are clear, Uniswap build on top of Ethereum is more decentralized (more secure) but expensive in terms of fees, while Pancake is cheep in fees at a cost of centralization, built on the Binance Smart Chain.
Here we will be looking at:
- Total Value Locked TVL
- Trading Volume
- Numbers of users
- Top pairs
- Price
The period that we will be looing at is form September 2020 to June 2021.
Historical Data on Total Value Lock on Uniswap VS Pancake
Here is the chart.
At first Uniswap was leading by a lot with more than 2 billions in TVL, while Pancake was under a 100M. Then in February 2021 Pancake started to grow a lot and at the end of April it overtake Uniswap just by a bit with almost 8 billions in TVL.
Uniswap then increased a lot, to a 12 billions, reclaiming its top spot.
Since then, Uniswap is in the lead with around 8B, while Pancake is around 4B.
Note on the TVL on Pancake, it has a syrup pools as well, and the overall TVL is higher then the liquidity represented here, that is suitable for comparison.
Trading Volume
Here is the chart for the trading volume.
A lot of volatility here, especially from Pancake.
We can see a similar pattern as for the liquidity, Uniswap strong at first, then Pancake catching up fast and overtaking it, and it the last period after the drop in prices, Uniswap is in the lead again.
In the last weeks Uniswap has a daily trading volume between one and two billions, while Pancake is in the range of 0.5 to 1 billion. When the market was up, Uniswap reached more than 3.5B, while Pancake had massive spikes up to a 6B.
A note on the trading volume. Unlike the TVL where capital is locked in smart contracts, the trading volume can be played a bit with wash trading. Since the fees are smaller on BSC its cheaper to wash trade there. It also can be happening on Uniswap as well. The main point here is that the trading volume should be taking with some reserves due to possible wash trading. Still more legit than most of the CEXs where the trading is on a central servers and zero fees 😊.
Numbers Of Users/Wallets
Well, this in an interesting one. The number of active wallets on Pancake has gone up trough the roof in the period of high prices, but then have came back down again in the last weeks to around 50k active wallets per day.
What this shows is that when the fees on Uniswap were high, the majority of users, and especially new users were using Pancake. Uniswap was just out of reach for so many. Also tokens like Safemoon that were launched on Pancake have been a major reason for the huge spike in the numbers.
Uniswap has seen a lot more smooth ride in terms of the numbers of users. For most of the time it has been in the range of 50k to 100k daily active wallets, while Pancake has reached a million and back to 50k.
Note: This data for Pancake was pooled out from Graphql.bitquery, since there is not much of data from official aggregators, and the can be wrong.
At the moment things stands like this:
- In TVL the winner is Uniswap
- In terms of trading volume it’s a draw
- In numbers of wallets the winner is Pancake
This is the current situation and as we know in crypto it can change fast.
Top Pairs
Here is the table for the top 10 pairs on June 24, 2021.
| No | Uniswap | Liquidity | Pancake | Liquidity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ETH-USDC | 626,000,000 | BNB-CAKE | 543,000,000 | |
| 2 | ETH-USDT | 378,000,000 | BNB-BUSD | 311,000,000 | |
| 3 | ETH-FEI | 364,000,000 | BUSDT-USDT | 294,000,000 | |
| 4 | FEI-TRIBE | 322,000,000 | USDC-BUSD | 137,000,000 | |
| 5 | ETH-BTC | 241,000,000 | BNB-BTC | 131,000,000 | |
| 6 | USDC-USDT | 233,731,925 | BNB-ETH | 128,000,000 | |
| 7 | ETH-WISE | 200,000,000 | BNB-USDT | 119,000,000 | |
| 8 | ETH-DAI | 137,000,000 | BTC-ETH | 113,000,000 | |
| 9 | DAI-USDC | 156,593,188 | BUSDT-TUSD | 72,000,000 | |
| 10 | ETH-UNI | 129,166,900 | BTC-BUSD | 68,000,000 |
For Uniswap I have compiled the data from V2 and V3.
What can be concluded from the above is that on Uniswap we have a more even distribution in the top 10 pairs, starting from 600M going to 130M. On Pancake the liquidity is more concentrated in the top 3 pairs, BNB-CAKE and BNB-BUSD, especially in the no.1 that is more than 500M.
Out of the top 10 pairs on Uniswap, 6 are paired with ETH. On Pancake out of the top 10 5 are paired with BNB.
Price
Here is the chart for the price of UNI and CAKE.
The similarity in the price is amazing 😊.
CAKE has come a bit late to the party and started its price growth in 2021, reaching more than 40$ token at the same time as UNI.
In the crash, both of the tokens dropped in a similar way, with CAKE dropping slightly more. At the moment UNI is trading around the 17$ and CAKE at the 13$.
Note that in terms of marketcap things are different, and UNI is leading by a lot, a 9B to 2.5B at the moment.
