According to CryptoPotato, Wintermute, a prominent market maker and liquidity provider, experienced significant growth in all business verticals in 2023, despite the market downturn. The platform reported that its over-the-counter (OTC) volume increased by over 400% throughout the year as volumes moved off-exchanges. In the first half of 2023, Wintermute's OTC trading volume slumped, even though the number of individual trades remained stable. However, this changed in the second half of the year as the number of unique trades increased sixfold to 29 million, and the platform's weekly OTC volume reached $2 billion.
Wintermute's OTC volumes grew fourfold in the second half of 2023 as the markets gained momentum. The platform saw a more than sixfold increase in the number of trades, totaling over 29 million, and recorded its highest OTC volume week, exceeding $2 billion during this period. This represents a significant rise of over 20% in the trading of distinct assets compared to the first half of 2023. The OTC trading volumes for Layer 1 assets followed the general trend of Wintermute's overall OTC volumes, declining by approximately half between the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023 before experiencing a remarkable 350% surge in the second half of 2023. Within the Layer 1 ecosystem, the Ethereum Ecosystem dominated, accounting for a 68% market share of volumes traded through its OTC desk. Solana, Avalanche, Cardano, and Polkadot Ecosystems made up the top 5 Layer 1 platforms in terms of volumes during the second half of 2023.
Layer 2 platforms exhibited approximately 30 times less trading activity compared to Layer 1s, with Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism Ecosystems leading in proportion. Wintermute noted consistent activity and growth in Layer 2s, registering a substantial 160% growth from the second half of 2022 to the second half of 2023. In the DeFi category, Wintermute reported a sevenfold growth in nominal volumes from the second half of 2022 to the second half of 2023, although the market share dropped from 16% to 11%. Yield Farming assets were the most traded within the DeFi category, followed by Oracles, Lending, and DEX tokens. The dominance of Yield Farming assets remained strong throughout the year, maintaining around 35% of DeFi volumes. Over the same period, notional volumes traded increased over ninefold. Oracle assets rebounded strongly after experiencing a slight drop in both volumes, representing 26% of all traded DeFi category volumes in the second half of 2023. DEX assets also experienced a significant decrease in DeFi market share during the same period but saw more than a 3.4x increase in notional volumes traded. Lending-related assets gained an additional 10 percentage points in market share from the first half to the second half of 2023, growing from 13% to 23%.
