SideShift.ai Weekly Report | 3rd - 9th March 2026

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

Highlights

• Gross volume fell to $5.79m (−13.9%) and shift count to 7,365 (−9.9%), with shifts above $10k hitting their lowest count of the year at just 101.
• USDT(BSC) climbed +51.5% to $1.26m, claiming the top user pair for a third straight week and cementing itself as a top three fixture.
• Third place affiliate returned with $231k (+72.2%), its strongest showing in months, as combined affiliate volume held flat at $1.73m and grew to 35.5% of platform share.
• XAI staking distributed 156,982.01 XAI ($14,020.04) at a 5.97% average APY, with the peak day hitting 8.68% on March 9th.

General Business News

BTC firmly reclaimed $70k for the first time in roughly five weeks, a level it had been repeatedly rejected at since early February's sell-off, touching $74k mid-week before Iran-related tensions pulled it back below $69k by Friday. The escalation sent oil above $100 for the first time in years and rattled equities across the board. HYPE was arguably the coin of the week, rebounding hard from its year-to-date lows near $20 back up to the $34 area, fueled by its emergence as the go-to venue for trading oil and gold perps around the clock while traditional markets were closed.

SideShift recorded $5.79m in gross volume, a further −13.9% decline following last week's drop, with user shifting ($4.35m, −13.5%) and liquidity shifting ($1.44m, −15.2%) both pulling back in line with a quieter market. On the liquidity side, a more balanced split between deposits and settlements across most stablecoin pairs kept rebalancing demand relatively contained, with the slower overall volume contributing to the lighter liquidity shifting total. The stark exception was USDT(BSC)/USDT(TRC-20), which bucked that trend and drove both user and liquidity shifting activity, claiming the top user pair for a third consecutive week at $339k — recovering from last week's $220k, though still well off the $718k it posted two periods ago. L-USDT/USDT(TRC-20) and BTC/USDT(ERC-20) followed closely behind.

Shift count pulled back to 7,365 (−9.9%) for a daily average of 1,052, with the decline felt across all shift size bands. Sub-$100 shifts proved to be the steadiest, holding their proportion of total count at 58.2%, while the drop sharpened toward the top end — shifts above $10k fell to just 101, their lowest count this year, generating $3.02m in volume compared to $5.07m two weeks ago. Combined with last week's record low whale volume proportion of 50.1%, it paints a consistent picture of large-ticket participation that has been quietly stepping back since February.

BTC returned to the top spot among individual coins at $1.85m (+2.2%), ending USDT(TRC-20)'s two-week reign, with user deposits at $954k and settlements at $611k, pointing to users predominantly selling BTC amid a choppy week of price action. USDT(TRC-20) followed immediately behind in second at $1.85m (−9.5%), with settlements continuing to dwarf deposits as the preferred landing coin, and its ongoing demand appears to be bringing USDT(BSC) along for the ride. The latter landed third, up +51.5% to $1.26m, its rise one of the quieter stories of the past two months, climbing from under $200k in early January to now firmly planting itself as a top three fixture.

L-USDT finished fourth at $966k (−22.1%) after last week's strong showing, though nothing specific drove the decline — integration and site volume simply ran lighter. USDT(ERC-20) rounded out the top five at $715k (−33.1%), with deposits nearly halving at −49.9%. Four of the top five spots going to stablecoins has now happened in roughly a third of weeks so far this year, a frequency that continues to reflect where user preference sits in the current market. Notably absent once again were ETH and SOL, both sliding consistently for weeks and sitting at their lowest volumes of the year, somewhat surprising given BTC's recovery above $70k, which in previous periods has tended to lift the broader market alongside it.

Alt networks collectively pulled back to $4.89m (−14.1%), with the Tron network remaining the largest at $1.99m despite slipping −14.5%, its lowest in recent weeks and a quiet contradiction given how central TRC-20 stablecoins have been to user activity. BSC was the bright spot, climbing +47.0% to $1.43m in a move that aligns closely with USDT(BSC)'s strong performance, and finished comfortably above most weekly totals this year outside of an outlier spike a few weeks back. The Solana network gave back last week's strong recovery, dropping −47.0% to $808k after what now looks like a brief reprieve in an otherwise inconsistent stretch. Base fell sharply to $199k (−58.2%) after a solid 10-day stretch, while the Polygon network held relatively steady at $265k (+2.2%) and Arbitrum was similarly flat at $122k (+3.7%).

Affiliate News

Affiliate volume held almost perfectly level at $1.73m (+0.2%) this week, a resilient result given the broader platform decline, with the top three affiliates each telling a slightly different story. First place extended its recent dominance at $656k (+1.9%) despite logging just 112 shifts, pointing to a consistently high average shift size that has defined its position for several weeks now. Second place slipped marginally to $293k (−2.9%) with 312 shifts, nothing particularly notable. The standout was third place, bouncing back to $231k (+72.2%) after two weeks in the $60-70k range — a genuine return to the volumes it was posting earlier in the year rather than a one-off spike. Interestingly, that volume recovery came with fewer shifts at 268 (−9.2%), mirroring first place's pattern of larger average shift sizes driving the numbers. Worth a mention further down the table is one affiliate who quietly logged 1,117 shifts at an average below $70, accounting for a meaningful slice of platform count without making much of a dent in volume.

Combined, the top affiliates accounted for 35.5% of platform volume, up from 30.6% last week — affiliates growing their share of a quieter week.

XAI Weekly Performance & Staking

XAI is currently trading at $0.0886 with a market cap of $13.84m, barely moving from the last report’s measurement of $13.94m (−0.67%). A total of 156,982.01 XAI ($14,020.04) was distributed to stakers across the week, with the peak landing on March 9th when 32,315.45 XAI was sent to the staking vault at an 8.68% APY, backed by $1.36m in daily volume. The weekly average APY of 5.97% came in slightly below last week's 6.13%, a modest dip consistent with the broader platform activity.

Additional XAI updates:

Total Value Staked: 141,850,134 XAI (+0.1%)
Total Value Locked: $12,629,963 (−0.4%)

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