Approach

• Swap volume: the total swap volume by pool was calculated using thorchain.daily_pool_stats tables, summing swap_volume_rune_usd
• Total locked volume (TVL): the TVL of each pool across time was calculated using thorchain.pool_block_balances
• Pool Efficiency: the daily swap volume divided by the TVL of the pool - why is this important? higher pool efficiency indicates higher swap fees collected and more rewards for users. An efficiency of 1 indicates that the swap volume of the pool is equivalent to the TVL for the day.

THORChain TVL and Swap Volume by Pools

Swap Volume and Pool-Depth (TVL) with Unique Liquidity Providers

The chart above shows the TVL in USD value of the pools on THORChain. AT the time of analysis, the BTC-BTC has the highest TVL (68.9M), followed by ETH-X_RUNE (45.9M).

The swap volumes across has been variable, with a significant gap between late July and mid-September as the protocol went down due to a compromise. Post ethereum live, the total swap volume spiked up to 50m and reached a new high.

The time series chart above will show the change in pool efficiency (volume/TVL) across time.

The chart above shows the 7-day average pool TVL in USD value alongside the total distinct number of LP-er from the start of the protocol. A short write up how on the limitations to how unique LP-ers were calculated is presented in the next section.

In short, we see a relationship between pool-depth and pool TVL for nearly all of the pool. The pools with highest number of distinct LP-ers are BTC-BTC, ETH-ETH, BNB-BNB, BNB-BUSD and ETH-XRUNE.

The chart above shows the 7-day average swap volume (USD) alongside the 7-day average for pool depth (TVL) across all pools. On the right-axis, the 7-day average efficiency of the pools are represented with the line chart.

Across all pools, we see that the BNB-BUSD, BNB-BNB and ETH-ETH pools had the highest efficiency. High TVL does not necessary equate to high efficiency as shown by the BTC-BTC and ETH-XRUNE pools.

Counting Unique Users on THORChain

Conventionally, most distinct users (be it LP, swaps) are identified by the transaction's origin address (from_address or origin_address). For liquidity provision on THORChain, it is not so direct due to flexibility of adding liquidity to pools. Users can deposit assets symmetrically or asymmetrically and depending on the strategy adopted, the number address recorded on the blockchain per transaction will be different. The strategies, with the address data is as follows:

• Strategy 1: Provide RUNE only - Thorchain's address (from_address from thorchain.liquidity_actions tables) will be recorded
• Strategy 2: Provide the Asset Pair (e.g. BTC) - Native's chain address (asset_address) will be recorded
• Strategy 3: Provide both RUNE and the Asset Pair - both Thorchain address and native chain's wallet's address will be recorded

Thus, both from_address and asset_address should be taken into account when finding the unique number if users. One way is to concatenate both addresses up into a unique string. So if a user provides RUNE+BNB with strategy 3, twice on the same day, it will be count as 1 unique users.

However, for whatever reason, if the user decides to provide liquidity in an asymmetrical way twice, first with BNB only and second with RUNE only to the same pool, this will be counted as two unique address due to the nature of how the transactions are recorded.

Putting these 2 charts together we see that

• High TVL doesn't necessary relate to high swap volume (case for BTC-BTC, ETH-XRUNE pool)
• High TVL is related to high number of distinct LP-ers