Written by: Five Fireball Leader, Vernacular Blockchain
Recently, there have been more and more debates on Uniswap VS Curve on major media platforms, especially Twitter, especially the KOLs on both sides of the platform. It is so loud that you can’t tell whether their ass decides their heads or their heads. butt.
There is no doubt that Uniswap and Curve are the "duopoly" in the current Defi circle and Dex field. Is there no room for two tigers, or will it maintain such a duopoly like most traditional fields? (For example, IOS and Android in the mobile operating system field, Intel and AMD in the chip manufacturing field, etc.)
Let's take a look together.
01 Who stole whose cake
In fact, the two were very peaceful at first. Uniswap focused on the DEX of conventional assets, and Curve focused on the swap of stablecoins and linked assets.
However, any company, including any project, is born with the urge to become bigger and stronger, so after the birth of Uniswap V3 and Curve V2, they put a foot into each other's field.
Uniswap V3 also wraps up the stablecoin swap business by customizing the upper and lower ranges and handling fees.
Curve V2 uses new curves and dynamic balance adjustment capabilities to make it possible to cover the entire price range, coupled with the cooperation with SNX atomic swaps and the emergence of Tricypto pools such as WBTC/ ETH/USDT, so that the Swap of blue-chip assets Not a problem at all on Curve's side either.
Since then, the two companies have started to “grab business” from each other while focusing on their own fields.
02 what happened this time
Recently, there are actually two things that are more eye-catching. Either one alone may not cause controversy, but when viewed together, it is especially easy for people to "talk to each other about SB".
One is that Uniswap has been criticized for a long time for the Token valueless capture problem. Isn’t it a vote to turn on the fee switch now? Then a bunch of KOLs began to argue that turning on the fee switch had no effect, because LPs ran out, and with the capture of that fee, Uniswap’s price-earnings ratio was still in the sky.
The second is that the LSD track has been very popular recently. Linked assets such as stETH and frxETH have flourished on Curve, and a new batch of small ecological projects around CVX such as Clever, Concreator, etc. have made the entire Curve ecology appear "Vibrant" inevitably makes Uniswap very jealous.
Then someone found that the Token inflation caused by Curve’s new emissions in 2023 was more than 20%. With so many Tokens, they either mined and sold to suppress the price, or locked up veCurve to greatly dilute the handling fees of existing veCurve holders + bribery Income, in short, is not a good thing.
As a result, the big Vs on both sides of Uniswap and Curve have gradually become more and more wary of words. They hold on to each other's pigtails + discuss their own advantages in detail . I have to say that most of them are actually justified. After all, sometimes the person who knows you best is your opponent. The advantages and disadvantages of the two agreements are clear to both parties. It just depends on which point you value more.
03 A collection of arguments from both sides
Uniswap side:
Batch Curve
Curve, you emit non-stop every year, inflation never stops, you are Ponzi...
Can your income (handling fee + bribery) cover the value of the Tokens you emit every year?
The Ve pledge model can only delay the selling pressure, but cannot really solve the problem.
Like Uniswap
Uniswap business model is better!
The expansion of the Uniswap ecosystem is all new products, and the Curve War ecosystem of Curve is a continuation of Ponzi.
Uniswap has lower liquidity costs.
Curve side:
Batch Uniswap
Uniswap, do you dare to open the fee switch? If you don’t open it, your assets are useless. Believe it or not, you can lose more than half of your LP (liquidity funds) if you open it.
Uniswap V3 directly led to the loss of pricing power, and Dex without pricing power has no future!
The liquidity management of Uniswap V3 is a nightmare for retail investors. 70% of the trading volume in V3 is driven by algorithms, and 43% of the trading volume is "toxic trading" such as Mev Bot. According to comprehensive statistics, the handling fees earned by most LPs Even their Impermanent Loss cannot be covered.
Like Curve
Curve Token has dividends and income. It is not an "air currency" that can only be governed by UNI .
Curve's emission is not Ponzi, but a plan in game theory to establish competition barriers through the Token economy.
Curve provides a real liquidity solution. The release of each CRV in Curve War is prepaid by the project party as the cost of liquidity.
You see, what you said is true and makes sense. So what do we do, where do we stand?
04 Two protocols from the perspective of users
According to me, you don't need to stand on either side, because there is a high probability that the two projects will continue to "love each other and kill each other" as the double leaders of infrastructure Dex.
If you have to choose one side, then you can also choose two of the following four leek perspectives that you think are important, and then choose a side.
Number of users: Uniswap wins
There is no doubt that UNI ’s daily activity is not on the same order of magnitude as Curve’s, but it is also related to the two positionings. Uniswap is aimed at mainstream retail investors, more like Taobao, and Curve is aimed at institutions and large investors, with a little Vipshop feel.
Ecological quantity: Curve wins
This is basically the opposite of the previous one.
There are almost no supporting projects on Uniswap. The only ones I can think of are two or three, and they are all very new. They belong to projects that have only appeared in recent months.
One is Arrakis, a project that automatically manages the upper and lower intervals of V3 LP, and many market makers should be using it; the other is GammaSwap, which gives people an option to "gamble" with Uniswap V3 LP (V3 LP is essentially short-selling volatility volatility, the opponent can do long volatility), what are you betting on? The money you earn from betting on your LP is not as much as your Impermanent Loss. When the time comes, your Impermanent Loss-your fee income will be my "impermanent income".
But the way this project is done is very funny. Suppose I am an LP, and the person who bet against me is called B. The way B bets against me is to pay me a handling fee, and then split the LP I deposited in Uniswap to get it back , put it still, and finally calculate how much I Impermanent Loss if I don't take it out... This is too simple and rude! Of course, it is a good thing for LP. After all, I can earn the original LP's money + B's handling fee.
There is also Panoptic, which makes options based on V3 LP . I haven't studied it carefully, but since V3 LP is essentially an option, it intuitively makes sense.
For Curve, don’t need too much... because Curve emits non-stop, and the emission can also be controlled by voting. Token itself can capture transaction fees + awesome Ve model, so you can play various flowers As a result, various ecological auxiliary projects have been born.
The most famous one is naturally Convex , which greatly reduces the threshold for users to pledge and lock veCurve, and solves the liquidity problem of veCrv by the way, which can be described as a "wonderful" solution.
In addition to Convex, YFI and StakeDAO are also players on the same track of veCurve's liquidity and income track.
Then there are vote-buying platforms like Voltium, a product of the Curve War period.
Now there are several new ones, such as:
- Concreator
Convex-based revenue aggregation and automatic reinvestment tools.
- Clever
Early withdrawal of future governance benefits + continuous, automated way to earn bribes and reward the platform, also based on Convex.
- Conic
A new way of guiding liquidity, which can be understood as Tokemak+ YFI on Curve, where users deposit assets and then he helps you to make LP on Curve to make money. Because of governance reasons, there may be Conic War at that time.
In short, they are all kinds of nesting dolls, but they make reasonable sets...
- Operating experience: Uniswap wins
This, no need to explain... Everyone who has used it knows that Curve does not talk about the complexity of the ecological nesting dolls, but it is the dozens of pools that make players who come into contact with it for the first time feel confused.
And in fact, just swap is fine, but if you choose to do LP... hey, Curve is really unprofessional and unlivable rhythm.
There is also Gas, the Gas on Ethereum is slightly higher, and the Gas spent on Curve to do an LP operation can really hurt your flesh, so it is basically a paradise for institutions and big players. Xiaobai and "low-net-worth players "Back off!
- Political correctness: Curve wins
This, there is no need to explain, Uniswap is afraid of attracting the attention of Sec, and it is shocked that it will not distribute any value to Token holders except governance, and then look at Curve, dividends, election bribery, pledge, voting, a whole set of Crpyto Native things Playing well.
Coupled with the relatively centralized censorship mechanism at the front end of Uniswap in 21 years, and the recent cusp of A16Z manipulating voting, Curve is definitely a complete winner in terms of political correctness in the circle.
- Agreement income: Different people have different opinions
But judging from the income of the agreement, Curve has distributed 100 million US dollars to veCurve Holder, and Uniswap may not have distributed a penny to Uniswap Token holders, so, Hmm...
