Long-term holders of one Ethereum (ETH)-based decentralized finance (DeFi) altcoin are taking a step back from their investments, according to crypto analytics firm Santiment.
In a new report, Santiment says that SushiSwap’s (SUSHI) total value locked (TVL) has witnessed a massive 93% decline since November of 2021.
In comparison, the TVL of SushiSwap competitor Uniswap (UNI) has only dropped 63% over the same timeframe, according to Santiment.
The firm also says that the number of unique active wallets interacting with SushiSwap is seeing very little growth.
“Looking at the UAW – the number of unique active wallets (UAW) interacting or performing a transaction with a DApp’s smart contracts – there are some occasional spikes but overall, there’s little real growth as protocol usage on average remains pretty low.”
As for Uniswap, Santiment says that the number of unique active wallets transacting on the network is on the up and up.
“Meanwhile, on Uniswap, UAW has been increasing for the last year and at a pretty organic rate. Protocol usage on average maintains at levels higher than one year ago, indicating a healthy protocol.”
Santiment also looks at its dormant circulation metric, which tracks the tokens that move after staying inactive for more than one year. According to the firm, sudden surges in previous dormant coins have historically preceded sharp price drops, and such a spike has just occurred for SUSHI, implying that long-term holders are selling off their positions.
“Looking at the SUSHI token itself, there have been notable movements since the start of the year… From this, we can observe that long-term holders have been exiting their positions. Previous Dormant Circulation (365) spikes have sharp price declines following it. We are now observing yet another spike that happened yesterday.”
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