- Uniswap may have a solid competitor backed by Lido Finance
- Although active UNI addresses are in the same zone, development activity is at its peak
Uniswaps [UNI] status as the top Automated Market Maker (AMM) could be jeopardized after a certain Maverick protocol announced a partnership with Lido Finance [LDO]. Like Uniswap. Maverick operates as a decentralized exchange (DEX) by bringing more capital control to the liquidity market.
Realistic or not, here it is UNI’s market cap in terms of ETH
Deploy the Lido stealth against UNI
Maverick’s March 8 announcement revealed that Lido has the most deposits of Ether wagered [stETH] would play a crucial role in his mission. So instead of using Ethereum [ETH] for rewards, users would get stETH.
Maverick uses liquidity pools @LidoFinance liquid staking token wstETH as quote asset
🟣LP with wstETH instead of ETH to receive additional wagering rewards.
🟣New opportunities for wstETH holders to put their liquid staking tokens to work.👉https://t.co/y0G4JW5eiy
2/8
— Maverick Protocol (@mavprotocol) March 8, 2023
So far, Uniswap has taken the top spot as the most widely used DEX. While others like it Pancake Swap [CAKE] And Crooked finances [CRV] to have also recorded incredible volumes, it’s been hard to boot the Hayden Adams-led project from its peak.
In fact, the protocol was the go-to AMM for most investors during the FTX contagion as users sought asset safety on DEXs. Nevertheless, Maverick’s partnership with Lido Finance still poses a threat.
One notable component that could drive competition for Uniswap is Lido’s dominance of DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL). At press time, the five chains belonged to Lido to help it retains first place. Here, the TVL generally indicates the total amount of assets in a liquidity pool.
However, Uniswap is nowhere near Lido in this regard. While Lido’s 30-day TVL saw a 6.20% increase, Uniswap was down 3.78%. And with a difference of more than $5 billion, it could be hard for the latter to catch up.
Source: DeFi Lama
A difficult race to overtake
In addition, information from DeFi Llama showed that the benefits of the collaboration may already be there. This is because the Maverick protocol had jumped into the top-10 DEXs under the Ethereum blockchain. However, with a weekly change of -13.58%, it can still be a hassle to catch Uniswap with seven-day volume of $6.58 billion.
Source: DeFi Lama
Read Uniswaps [UNI] Price prediction 2023-2024
Moreover, Uniswap does doesn’t seem to rest on its belts based on the trend of its development activity. The metric measures a project’s public GitHub repositories, aimed at determining commitment to upgrade the network.
At the time of writing, Unsiwap’s development activity stood at 33.14 — one of the highest points since the start of the new year. However, active addresses on the network weren’t particularly impressive.
The metric indicates the level of investor speculation and synergy related to a token. Despite the stalemate with the metric, Maverick’s goal of competing directly with Uniswap could be a wild goose chase in the meantime, barring any unusual developments.
Source: Sentiment