Crypto Futures Show Bias for Uniswap's UNI Token After Curve Finance Exploit

A multi-million dollar exploit of stablecoin-focused decentralized exchange (DEX) Curve Finance has traders pivoting toward the rival Uniswap's UNI token.

Funding rates in perpetual futures tied to UNI have surged to an annualized 19% in the wake of the exploit, according to data tracked by crypto services provider Matrixport.

A positive funding rate means the perpetual contract's price is trading at a premium to the mark price or the estimated true value of a contract, also known as "marking-to-market." Positive rates also indicate longs or traders holding leveraged buy positions are dominating and willing to pay funding to shorts to keep their positions open.

"The UNI token [perpetuals] trades at a nearly 20% premium as traders expect Uniswap to gain even more market share after the CRV exploit," Markus Thielen, head of research and strategy at Matrixport, said in an email.

Late Sunday, Curve, the third-largest DEX, fell victim to a flash loan exploit that put $100 million worth of cryptocurrency at risk. Curve DAO's native CRV token fell over 15% to $0.63 following the attack. The quick decline introduced additional risk, potentially threatening to liquidate $70 million worth of borrowed position of Curve founder.

Still, the perpetual futures market indicates no signs of panic, with funding rates in CRV and AAVE markets holding above zero.

"CRV DAO perp futures are still trading at a small premium, indicating that traders are more focused on moving positions away from the DEX (regarding TVL) rather than shorting the token," Thielen said.

The total value locked (TVL) locked in Curve Finance fell from $3.2 billion to $1.8 billion following the hack, according to data source DeFiLlama. Meanwhile, the TVL locked in Uniswap has held steady at around $3.8 billion while AAVE's has declined from $5.85 billion to $5.37 billion.