SideShift.ai Weekly Report | 5th - 11th May 2026

Welcome to the two hundredth and third edition of the weekly stats report - your one-stop shop for all things SideShift.ai.

Highlights

• Gross volume of $8.44m (+51.3%) alongside a shift count of 6,729 (+14.1%), the platform's strongest week of Q2 and 12.2% clear of the YTD average.
• 231,873 XAI ($20,151) distributed to stakers at an 8.93% average APY, peaking at 16.19% on May 11th.
• The $50k+ band doubled to $1.86m across 27 shifts, the strongest whale-tier contribution since late February.
• Stablecoins surged back across the board, with USDC(ERC-20) at $2.68m (+439.5%), USDT(TRC20) at $2.51m (+48.1%), and L-USDT at $830k (+52.1%) all posting strong weeks.
• 11 of 12 top coins finished in the green, headlined by TON's breakout to $410k (+560%) and the return of cbBTC(ERC-20) activity driving the week's top user pair.

General Business News

BTC put its first weekly close above $80k since late January on the board, holding the line through the week and turning what had been a ceiling for three months into a floor. The shift in tone showed up cleanly in the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which printed a Neutral 50 on May 5th to end a 108-day fear streak dating all the way back to January 17th. SOL was the asset that actually ran with it, climbing from the mid-$80s into the mid-$90s on the back of Solana Accelerate Miami, where the Solana Foundation rolled out Pay.sh alongside Google Cloud — an AI agent payments gateway that lit a fire under the agentic AI narrative and gave SOL the catalyst it had been waiting on. ETH, meanwhile, was conspicuously absent from the party, drifting in the $2,300s all week as capital concentrated almost entirely at the top of the stack and one rung beneath it.

SideShift recorded $8.44m in gross volume (+51.3%), the platform's strongest week since mid-February and one that finally pushed comfortably clear of the YTD running average of $7.52m by 12.2%, an outperformance that's been hard to come by all year. User shifting climbed to $5.57m (+31.3%) while liquidity shifting more than doubled to $2.87m (+114.8%), the gap heavily traceable to the top user pair. cbBTC(ERC-20)/BTC reclaimed the top spot at $639k as familiar whale activity resurfaced, with the deposit-heavy, near-zero-settle nature of that flow pulling SideShift into rebalancing mode and pushing liquidity shifting north. USDC(ERC-20)/USDT(TRC20) and its inverse followed in 2nd and 3rd at $480k and $425k respectively, with BTC/USDC(ERC-20) at $238k rounding out the leaders. For context against the closest comparable week, the $9.14m performance from earlier in February 2026 still edges this one on gross volume, but this week’s average shift size came in at $1,254 — the higher of the two and a clean signal that whales were doing the heavy lifting.

Gross shift count finished at 6,729 (+14.1%) for a daily average of 961, running -4.3% below the YTD average of 7,029 and underscoring exactly where the week's strength came from. The sub-$100 band recovered to 3,969 shifts from last week's two-month low, while the $1k+ band climbed to 786 from 673 and the $10k+ band stepped up to 206. This marked its strongest performance of Q2 and the first time it's cleared the 200 mark in that span.

The top of the size ladder is where the week really separated itself. The $50k+ band netted $1.86m, a doubling on last week's $883k, while the $10k+ tier handled 206 shifts for $5.89m and logged a sharp +92.7% rise. Whale-tier activity at this scale hasn't been seen since the late-January through February stretch, when a concentrated run of large shifts pulled the entire platform's volume above $20m on more than one occasion before tapering off through March and April.

The top 5 separated cleanly into two stories. BTC held its perch at $3.88m (+26.1%), though deposits at $844k (-3.8%) and settlements at $1.15m (-8.6%) both gave a touch of ground — meaning the entire weekly gain came from liquidity-driven flow, which traces back to the cbBTC pair pulling rebalancing demand into BTC. ETH followed at $1.23m (+19.3%) for the lowest gain among the top 5, fitting with the laggard role it played all week. SOL was the only red mark across the top 12 at $638k (-5.9%), a striking absence given the week's narrative was largely written around it — though with deposits and settlements both flat near $300k, the read is simply a pause after last week's +51.9% move.

Meanwhile, the stablecoin podium changed hands, and this action proved to be a key component of our weekly growth. USDC(ERC-20) erupted to $2.68m (+439.5%) and overtook USDT(TRC20) for the #2 spot, with user deposits and settlements running roughly even for a clean two-sided performance — a meaningful flip from a coin that has spent most of 2026 well behind its TRC20 counterpart. USDT(TRC20) itself climbed to $2.51m (+48.1%), its strongest week since the early February run. L-USDT rounded out the top 5 at $830k (+52.1%), while USDT(ERC-20) sat just outside at $656k, leaving the stablecoin field looking healthier than it has in many months.

Alternate network volume combined for $4.89m (+19.8%), with Tron doing most of the heavy lifting at $2.65m (+52.1%) — its strongest showing since early March and almost entirely the USDT(TRC20) story, with the stablecoin alone accounting for $2.51m of that figure. Solana held second among the alt networks at $1.14m (+10.2%), while Base was the quiet outperformer at $197k (+91.5%), nearly doubling on last week for its best showing in months. Avalanche collapsed to $7k (-95.7%) as the one-off AVAX/BTC activity that lifted last week's figure drained away just as quickly. The Ethereum network climbed to $3.91m (+79%) on the back of the broader stablecoin recovery, comfortably ahead of any individual alt network, though still trailing the combined sum.

In listing news this week, 9 new tokens were added to SideShift, including: United Stables (BSC), SkyAI (ETH), Stable (BSC), Midnight (BSC), DeXe (BSC), Ripple USD (ETH), PayPal USD (SOL), Global Dollar (ETH & SOL), and crvUSD (ETH).

Affiliate News

Top affiliates combined for $1.33m (+26.1%), with the top group remaining unchanged from last week. Our first place affiliate gave back -7.9% to $224k, the second consecutive period of pullback after its $482k peak in late April, while second and third both posted gains of +19.6% to $174k and +11.2% to $143k respectively, the latter continuing the patient climb it has put up week after week through 2026. On the count side, our second place affiliate retained top spot at 566 shifts (+12.1%), with our third place close behind at 375 (+11.9%) — both growing in step with their respective volumes. 

Combined affiliate share of platform volume came in at 15.7%, down from 18.9% last week as the broader site-driven surge ran well ahead of affiliate activity.

XAI Weekly Performance & Staking

XAI stakers received 231,873 XAI ($20,151) to the staking vault over the week at an average APY of 8.93%, both figures stepping up materially on last week in line with the overall rise in gross volume. The 7-day high landed on May 11th at 16.19% APY on the back of $2.16m in daily shift volume, delivering 58,842 XAI in a single day and accounting for roughly a quarter of the week's total payout. XAI's own price held quietly at $0.0865, near enough flat over the 7-day window with market cap closing the week at $13.75m (+0.43%).

Additional XAI updates:

Total Value Staked: 143,219,308 XAI (+0.16%)
Total Value Locked: $12,459,832 (+0.14%)

That’s all for now - thanks for reading and happy shifting.