Attack of the vampires: Uniswap loses 57% TVL as rivals up rewards

With leading decentralized exchange Uniswap having ceased its yield-farming incentive program, rival automated market makers 1inch, SushiSwap and Bancor are snapping up liquidity providers with targeted rewards.

On Nov. 17, the same day that Uniswap’s rewards ended, the cloned, automated market maker SushiSwap announced a new incentive scheme for the same four pairings previously incentivized by Uniswap.

Uniswap’s total value locked, or TVL, plummeted by more than $1 billion in less than 24 hours that day. Since posting a record high of $3.07 billion on Nov. 14, Uniswap’s TVL has crashed 57.5% down to $1.3 billion.

By contrast, SushiSwap’s TVL has rocketed nearly 160% since Nov. 17, from $407 million to $1.05 billion. It’s now up more than 313% since a week ago. 

SushiSwap was not the only DEX to launch a “vampire” campaign targeting Uniswap’s liquidity providers, with Bancor unveiling a liquidity mining program including retroactive rewards on Nov. 17.

On Nov. 18, 1inch launched the second stage of its yield-farming incentives, allocating an additional 1% of its token’s supply to liquidity providers. Speaking to Cointelegraph, 1inch CEO and co-founder, Sergej Kunz, said:

“Right now we’re seeing a lot of other projects launching incentives after Uniswap’s ended. As we are confident that our Mooniswap protocol has a lot of potential to be unlocked while attracting additional liquidity, we decided to announce our new liquidity mining program in order to hunt for the freed up liquidity from the Uniswap.”

Automated market makers comprise noncustodial decentralized exchanges that settle trades using liquidity pooled by users. In addition to offering liquidity providers, many DEXs have sought to attract users by offering yield-farming rewards in the form of their native tokens. 

UNI token holder and blockchain-powered streaming platform Audius submitted a Uniswap governance proposal to reinstate the exchange’s liquidity mining program with about half the rewards of the previous program on Nov. 17.

The proposal has nearly passed its first round of voting. However, it must complete two more stages of voting and secure at least 40 million votes to be implemented. Since decentralizing governance on Sept. 16, Uniswap has failed to pass any governance proposals.