SideShift.ai Weekly Report | 4th - 10th March 2025

Welcome to the one hundred and forty-fourth edition of the weekly stats report - your one-stop shop for all things SideShift.ai.

This past week saw SideShift token (XAI) navigate a downward adjustment, trading within a 7-day range of $0.1560 to $0.1763. The main price drop occurred abruptly mid-week, after which XAI partially recovered and stabilized around current levels. At the time of writing, XAI is priced at $0.1596, reflecting a market cap of $23,400,088, a decline of -8.1% compared to last week's sum.

XAI stakers earned an average weekly APY of 10.47% this week, with daily rewards peaking on March 11th, 2025. On that day, 50,456.82 XAI was distributed directly to our staking vault, reflecting a daily APY of 15.07% and aligning with a daily volume high of $3,714,358. Throughout the week, a cumulative total of 249,547.51 XAI, valued at $36,467.89 USD, was rewarded to stakers.

Additional XAI updates:

Total Value Staked: 131,282,205 XAI (0.0%)
Total Value Locked: $21,041,210 (-7.6%)

General Business News

Last saw BTC close the period on uncertain footing, briefly dipping below the psychologically important $80k level in the wake of the US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve announcement. Ethereum faced deeper losses, retreating to a new 16-month low around $1,800, while Solana dipped below $120, even with its inclusion in the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile. Overall, crypto markets mirrored broader financial uncertainty, weighed down by weakening sentiment across both traditional and digital assets.

SideShift maintained remarkable consistency, finishing with a gross weekly volume of $19.1m (+0.4%), very closely aligned with the steady totals recorded over the previous five weeks. User shifting volume experienced a slight decline, ending at $13.9m (-5.3%), while a higher degree of liquidity shifting was required for internal rebalancing, totaling $5.3m. Stablecoin activity remained evident, with BTC/USDT (ERC20) once again leading the top pairs among users, generating $1.20m. Notably, this marked the fifth time in the past six weeks that BTC/USDT (ERC20) topped the charts, a change from the sustained flow of ETH/SOL shifts that preceded it to begin the year. 

Shift count clearly emerged as this week's most exceptional metric, increasing +46% to 15,643 shifts, a new all-time weekly high for SideShift. Most notably, March 5th delivered an extraordinary daily shift count of 4,406 - easily surpassing the previous record and highlighting an exceptional spike in user activity. The elevated pace remained throughout the week, translating into robust daily averages of 2,235 shifts per day alongside a consistent daily volume average of $2.73m, underscoring a significant boost in engagement relative to recent weeks.

This sudden rise in our shift count was primarily driven by a sharp increase in small-scale shifts (those valued at less than $100). The chart below illustrates the weekly volume (blue line) and shift count (red line) for these smaller shifts, with percentages indicating their proportion of the total weekly sum. Most notably, small-value shifts dramatically rose this week, reaching 58.1% of our gross weekly shift count - one of the highest ever shares recorded to date. Despite this rapid influx, SideShift smoothly handled the increased shift count, processing all shifts seamlessly without disruption or delays.

BTC retained the top spot despite a modest dip in total volume (deposits + settlements) to $8.0m (-5.4%). It stood out as the only leading coin to experience an uptick in settlements, climbing +7.8% to $3.37m. On the other hand, user deposits dropped sharply, decreasing -34.9% to $2.52m. This divergence clearly illustrates users' growing keenness to stack BTC, a marked contrast to the broader retreat observed among other top assets.

USDT (ERC20) held onto second place but recorded the largest volume contraction among our top coins, shrinking -22.3% to $4.33m. Both deposits and settlements fell notably, down -33.3% to $986k and -20.0% to $1.88m, respectively. Despite this significant weekly decline, USDT's volume remained comfortably within the range of its monthly average, continuing a gentle upward trajectory that started in early February.

SOL's volume slid further to $3.54m (-7.6%), marking its fourth consecutive week of decline. Deposits slipped moderately by -8.1% to $1.38m, but settlements bore the brunt, falling -25.2% to $1.14m. Similarly, ETH continued its downward trend, also for the fourth consecutive week, and totaled $2.97m (-7.0%). Interestingly, while top ranked coins on SideShift struggled to gain traction, all mid-ranked coins (positions 7 to 13) saw double-digit volume increases, shift action that was heavily driven by an influx in user deposits. This trend clearly reflected a broader shift in preference, as users opted predominantly to settle into BTC, and to a lesser degree, stablecoins.

Alternate networks to ETH combined for $14.13m in total volume, up +12.8% from last week, boosted by an observable jump in stablecoin shifting across several networks. The Solana network retained its leading position, reaching $5.94m (+4.8%), supported by a solid increase in USDC (SOL) shifting, which totaled $2.06m (+48.6%). The TRON network maintained steady momentum, finishing at $3.60m (+2.9%), while the Polygon network was the week's standout performer, surging to $1.83m (+240.2%) thanks to an exceptional increase of near 50x in VERSE (POLYGON) shifting ($1.17m) and a substantial +417% move in USDC (POLYGON) volume ($1.08m). Meanwhile, the BSC network slipped slightly, ending at $1.25m (-14.9%), while the Arbitrum network dropped more significantly to $588k (-29.3%).

SideShift added support for several new tokens this past week, including KAITO on Base, MOVE on Ethereum, and USDC.e on the Sonic Network. Shifting of all of these tokens is now live, with more additions coming soon. 

Affiliate News

The sum of top affiliate volumes cooled slightly to $8.08m (-5.1%), though they still contributed an impressive 42.17% of total weekly volume, closely mirroring last week's outstanding proportion of 44.69%. Our first-placed affiliate maintained its lead despite dropping -21.8%, and still ended with a very solid $4.11m. However, the outlier this week was our newly ranked second-placed affiliate, which rose +122.3% to $2.12m, while also driving an astonishing rise in shift count, singlehandedly contributing 8,313 shifts. This allowed it to switch places with the previous runner-up, which settled into third with $800k (-38.2%).

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading and happy shifting.