Unlocking the Power of Layer 2: Uniswap’s Transaction Data Reveals DeFi Secrets

Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, is changing the old ways of banking by letting people trade directly. But to really understand how well it’s working, we need lots of transaction data, especially from what’s called Layer 2 (L2) solutions. These are like special highways that make DeFi faster and more efficient than the main roads, called Layer 1 (L1). We decided to dig into Uniswap, a big player in the DeFi world. We looked at over 50 million transactions across four networks: Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon. By creating daily indices, we can now see how people are using DeFi, how well it’s scaling, and how wealth is being distributed. For example, we found out that L2 solutions can handle a lot more transactions than L1, which is great for making DeFi more accessible. We also created a cool tool using Python that anyone can use to calculate decentralization indices. This is a big deal because it helps data scientists do more advanced research. So, our work isn’t just about numbers. It’s about helping the smart Web3 community grow. By making this data available, we’re giving researchers a powerful tool to understand and improve DeFi.