SideShift.ai Weekly Report | 24th February - 2nd March 2026

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

Highlights

• Shift count climbed to 8,171 (+14.1%) even as gross volume slipped to $6.73m (−14.7%).
• USDT (TRC-20) held first place for a second straight week, with stablecoins claiming four of the top five spots by volume.
• L-USDT posted its best performance of the year at $1.24m (+169.5%), with USDC (SOL) close behind at +382.1%.
• XAI staking yields strengthened to 6.13% APY, with 161,569.62 XAI ($16,880.65) distributed to stakers.
• Top affiliates combined for $1.73m (30.6% of platform volume), with second (+67.7%), third (+144.3%), and the majority of remaining partners all posting increases.

General Business News

BTC dropped to the ~$63k area over the weekend as headlines around U.S.–Israel strikes on Iran hit global markets, before rebounding back toward the high-$60k range and briefly pressing $70k before stalling. Those $6–7k swings played out twice within days, tied closely to geopolitical developments.Outside crypto, oil held gains near multi-month highs on supply fears, gold touched near-record territory before pulling back, and U.S. equities sold off, as each market absorbed the same headlines differently

SideShift recorded $6.73m in gross volume, a −14.7% decline that marked the quietest week since the turn of the year. With sentiment still firmly in the basement following last week's historic fear streak, shifting activity followed suit. User shifting eased to $5.03m (−6.0%), while liquidity shifting bore the heavier blow, falling to $1.70m (−33.0%) as the internal rebalancing demand that supported last week's focus dried up. The top user pairs reflected a market in a lower gear — USDT (BSC)/USDT (TRC-20) led at $220k, followed by L-USDT/USDT (TRC-20) at $214k and BTC/USDT (TRC-20) at $166k. Those figures don't just trail last week's leaders, they don't reach half of them — the prior report's top pair alone cleared $718k. Notably, all three pairs shared USDT (TRC-20) as a counterpart, a quiet but telling sign of where demand was concentrated despite the lower volumes.

The shift count picture was more encouraging, climbing to 8,171 (+14.1%) for a daily average of 1,167, yet volume per day slipped to $961k, exposing the gap between activity and conviction. The growth was almost entirely driven by sub ~$100 shifts, which padded the count without moving the needle on notional volume. The more telling figure sat at the other end of the size spectrum: whale shifts above $10k accounted for just 50.1% of weekly volume ($3.37m), an eight-week low and a sharp departure from the 60–70% range that has held for most of the past two months. Fewer large-ticket participants showed up this week, and volume followed accordingly, meaning the count increase was mostly noise, not signal.

USDT (TRC-20) held onto first place with $2.05m in total volume (−14.7%), keeping BTC off the top spot for a second straight week, a feat that says as much about where confidence sits right now as it does about stablecoin demand. User settlements drove the coin's volume at $966k (−16.9%), with deposits a distant second at $338k (+16.8%), a composition that has now defined the coin's position for several weeks running and points to users consistently preferring to land in Tron-based USDT. BTC had an opposite pattern and finished second at $1.81m (−41.1%), with deposits falling to $899k (−39.4%) while settlements recovered to $670k (+26.0%). 

L-USDT reached its best weekly total of the year at $1.24m (+169.5%) for third place overall, topping its previous high of $1.13m set in late January, with user deposits doing the heavy lifting at $585k (+159.7%) on the back of integration activity. USDT (ERC-20) followed in fourth at $1.07m (+31.0%), with deposits landing at $393k (+46.3%) and settlements at $494k (+10.1%). USDC (SOL) closed out the top five at $881k (+382.1%), consisting of deposit-heavy and site-driven volume that often arrives in bursts rather than builds week to week. Four of the five top spots going to dollar-pegged assets is also worth noting — it has happened three times already in 2026, a frequency that would have been rare this time last year. The attached chart tells the broader story — combined top-five volume has unwound the majority of the mid-February surge, pulling back toward the range that defined the start of the year.

Alt networks collectively slipped to $5.70m (−16.2%), while the Ethereum network managed a modest +2.4% gain to $3.34m. Growth weeks for the Ethereum network have been rare this year, with this one largely a product of stablecoin activity holding firm on the network. Tron remained the largest alt network at $2.34m, though it fell −20.1% from last week's high, and BSC dropped sharply to $973k (−60.9%) as the stablecoin rotation that propped both up last week slowed down. The most notable move came from the Solana network, which nearly doubled to $1.53m (+97.4%), reversing last week's breakdown and reclaiming a more prominent position in the rankings. Base also had a solid week at $476k (+60.7%), while Polygon added $259k (+41.7%), and Arbitrum held steady at $118k (−4.4%).

Affiliate News

Affiliate volume came in at $1.73m (−14.5%), a pullback driven almost entirely by first place, which fell to $643k (−46.3%) despite remaining the clear volume leader. Second place climbed to $301k (+67.7%) and third reached $165k (+144.3%), with the remaining top affiliates also posting increases across the board — a sign that the volume decline was concentrated at the top while growth was widespread everywhere else. The shift count picture tells a different story though. First place completed just 169 shifts (−2.7%), while second and third logged 364 (+9.3%) and 129 (−20.0%) respectively. Further down the table, fifth place generated $120k in volume but recorded 1,381 shifts (+72%),  roughly 17% of the platform's gross shift count for the week, at an average shift size below $90. 

Combined, the top affiliates accounted for 30.6% of platform volume, up slightly from 29.5% last week.

XAI Weekly Performance & Staking

XAI now trades at $0.0892, pulling the market cap down to $13.94m from $16.87m last week (−17.4%). Despite the drop in valuation, staking returns ticked higher. A total of 161,569.62 XAI ($16,880.65) was distributed, up from 154,794.76 XAI previously, and the average APY rose to 6.13% from 5.86%. The peak payout arrived on March 2nd, when 33,487.07 XAI was sent to the staking vault at a 9.02% APY, supported by $1.28m in daily volume. Yields improved week-over-week even as overall activity ran lighter, a small but notable divergence from the last report.

Additional XAI updates:

Total Value Staked: 141,704,403 XAI (−0.1%)
Total Value Locked: $12,676,181 (−17.7%)

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