Blockchain Developer Tools and the DEX Market

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Blockchain Developer Tools and the DEX Market

Key Takeaways

Introduction

A competitive landscape of the top 25 decentralized exchanges by market share has been presented in the DEX Market Overview spreadsheet. In total, 28 exchanges have been listed in the spreadsheet. However, three of the exchanges are basically different versions of the same exchange running on different blockchains, and they warrant inclusion due to their significant trading volume. 25 unique DEXes have been listed in the spreadsheet.

Notes on the reasons for the inclusion or exclusion of certain exchanges are presented below. The market share was calculated based on the 24-hour trading volume on June 9, however, the trading volume, and the corresponding market share can change rapidly.

Some of the most popular blockchain developer tools for each of the assigned blockchains have been described in the Blockchain Developer Tools spreadsheet. Notes and some images uncovered during research related to these tools are presented in the Blockchain Developer Tools section below.

Decentralized Exchanges

The daily trading volume has been sourced on June 9 from CoinGecko, unless an exchange was only listed on CoinMarketCap. The market share was calculated by dividing that volume with the total trading volume on all decentralized exchanges, as reported by CoinGecko.

CoinGecko was the primary source for the number of listed coins and the number of trading pairs as well, unless the exchange was only listed on CoinMarketCap. In that case, the coins and trading pairs were counted manually.

The token of the exchange's native blockchain, as reported by CoinMarketCap, has most often been used as the base token. If an exchange does not have a native blockchain, the most commonly used trading pair (often a stablecoin) was noted instead.

All decentralized exchanges run on blockchains via smart contract applications, and settle transactions on their underlying blockchains. Therefore, the average time to place orders and the average settlement time are always the same, and they are equivalent to the time it takes the underlying blockchain (Layer 1 solution) to produce a new block, sometimes referred to as "block time".

Most of the listed decentralized exchanges have very similar features, and therefore lack any unique competitive advantages. In fact, most exchanges are direct copies (forks) of the source code of one another (a lot of exchanges are direct copies of Uniswap, which is one of the first decentralized exchanges to gain mass adoption). Frequently, the only differentiating factor between these exchanges is the underlying blockchain that they use to settle transactions. Therefore, exchange descriptions were often copied directly from CoinMarketCap.

Growth was very hard to quantify, and was unavailable for most decentralized exchanges. This is likely because a significant number of these exchanges are relatively new, and smart contracts related to them have not been flagged and tracked yet. For those exchanges for which growth has been reported in column O, it was sourced from DappRadar's metric of the change in the number of users over the past 30 days. Since these are pseudonymous decentralized exchanges, DappRadar defines the number of users as the "number of unique wallet addresses interacting with dapp's smart contracts". Even for those exchanges, sometimes the growth divers were not known, and the growth can likely be attributed to the overall rise of the DEX market.

Inclusion Reasons

Exclusion Reasons

Blockchain Developer Tools

Methodology

The number of users is an unreliable metric for determining the top developer tools for a certain blockchain, as some tools are more geared towards developers only, while other tools are useful for consumers and the general public. This, along with the fact that most blockchain developer tools do not report the number of users, makes ranking developer tools using quantitative metrics unfeasible. Instead, the tools presented in the attached spreadsheet have been identified by referencing multiple articles and third-party top lists for each blockchain. The types of users and the stage of development for each tool are based on a subjective assessment of the tool's features and development timeline.

Bitcoin

Ethereum

MetaMask

Geth

Binance Smart Chain

  • The Binance Smart Chain is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). While there is a limited number of tools available for Binance Smart Chain specifically, developer tools that have been created for Ethereum are far more popular on the Binance Smart Chain as well. For example, while many of the decentralized exchanges presented above have versions running on Binance Smart Chain, most require users to use MetaMask instead of the Binance Chain Wallet to access them.

XRP Ledger

Cardano

  • The mainnet of Cardano still does not support smart contracts, which means it does not support decentralized applications. Cardano's "Alonzo" upgrade is expected to bring smart contract functionality to the blockchain by the end of August. Cardano supports Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) integration through KEVM, so Ethereum developer tools will likely be the most popular developer tools for Cardano once the Alonzo upgrade is completed.

Polkadot

  • Polkadot is a compartmentalized blockchain (built out of many sub-chains), which is why its developer tools are more oriented toward core blockchain functionality instead of decentralized applications. Some Polkadot applications (built using Polkadot core tools) are actually smart contract development platforms for Polkadot. Three core development tools for Polkadot are presented in the attached spreadsheet, followed by two smart contract platforms for developing decentralized applications on Polkadot.

Stellar

VeChain

Cosmos

  • Cosmos has a diverse suite of developer tools, and four of the most popular tools have been presented in the attached spreadsheet.

Solana

Research Strategy

The decentralized exchanges have been ranked by market share in the spreadsheet. The market share was calculated by dividing the 24-hour trading volume on each exchange (most often used CoinGecko as a source) with the total trading volume on all decentralized exchanges, as reported by CoinGecko. The market share was calculated based on the 24-hour trading volume on June 9, however, the trading volume, and the corresponding market share can change rapidly.

Most of the listed decentralized exchanges have very similar features, and therefore lack any unique competitive advantages. In fact, most exchanges are direct copies (forks) of the source code of one another (a lot of exchanges are direct copies of Uniswap, which is one of the first decentralized exchanges to gain mass adoption). Frequently, the only differentiating factor between these exchanges is the underlying blockchain that they use to settle transactions. Therefore, exchange descriptions were often copied directly from CoinMarketCap.

Growth was very hard to quantify, and was unavailable for most decentralized exchanges. This is likely because a significant number of these exchanges are relatively new, and smart contracts related to them have not been flagged and tracked yet. For those exchanges for which growth has been reported in column O, it was sourced from DappRadar's metric of the change in the number of users over the past 30 days. Since these are pseudonymous decentralized exchanges, DappRadar defines the number of users as the "number of unique wallet addresses interacting with dapp's smart contracts". Even for those exchanges, sometimes the growth divers were not known, and the growth can likely be attributed to the overall rise of the DEX market.

The number of users is an unreliable metric for determining the top developer tools for a certain blockchain, as some tools are more geared towards developers only, while other tools are useful for consumers and the general public. This, along with the fact that most blockchain developer tools do not report the number of users, makes ranking developer tools using quantitative metrics unfeasible.

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