DeFi 'Vampire' SushiSwap Still Hemorrhaging Liquidity

Uniswap challenger SushiSwap continues to lose vital liquidity, with total value locked falling by 8% in the past 24 hours.

Sep 30, 2020 at 12:27 p.m. UTC

Updated Sep 14, 2021 at 10:02 a.m. UTC

DeFi trading protocol SushiSwap, which threatened to sap the life out of rival Uniswap just two weeks ago, is still losing crucial liquidity.

Data from DeFi Pulse shows total value locked (TVL) in SushiSwap has dropped nearly 8% in the past 24 hours.
TVL represents the dollar value of the tokens locked into a protocol's smart contracts. While not universally accepted, it's generally considered a key success metric for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects.
This is particularly true for automated market maker (AMM) exchanges, such as SushiSwap and Uniswap, which rely on users depositing tokens in order to provide liquidity and create the trading experience.
As such, Wednesday's figures don't make for good reading; SushiSwap has been on a near-uninterrupted decline since mid-September when its creator made off with, and then returned, the dev fund.
After hitting an all-time high of $1.4 billion on Sept. 12, Sushi's TVL fell by two-thirds to nearly $490 million just a week later.
While that rate of decline has shallowed, TVL has still fallen a further $130 million to $354 million in the past nine days.
Wednesday's drop of nearly $50 million is the biggest since TVL fell by $100 million on Sept. 21.

This marks a significant change in SushiSwap's fortunes, which just weeks ago looked to supersede Uniswap after it took $830 million in vital liquidity.
However, a $500 million UNI airdrop and concerns over SushiSwap's founder saw most of that liquidity bounce back to Uniswap.
Indeed, from just $430 million in TVL in mid-September, Uniswap has made a dramatic snapback, becoming the first protocol to break the $2 billion milestone this week.
In the past 24 hours, Uniswap's TVL has risen by approximately 2%.

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