SushiSwap: decentralised exchanges rating breakdown
41 chains
The widest deployment in the category — 41 chains, more than Uniswap — and the clearest demonstration that deployment count is not coverage. Its $212m of thirty-day volume is one two-hundredth of Uniswap’s across a similar surface area.
The widest deployment in the category — 41 chains, more than Uniswap — and the clearest demonstration that deployment count is not coverage. Its $212m of thirty-day volume is one two-hundredth of Uniswap’s across a similar surface area.
How the score is built
Each criterion is scored 0–10 and weighted. The median column is the middle score across every entry in this ranking, so a row reads as a position rather than a number.
| Criterion | What we measured | Weight | Score | Category median | Rank | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back? | — | 30% | 3 | 5 | 8 of 9 | -0.60 |
| What traders actually paid | 0.6639 what traders actually paid · computed · 2026-08-27 · source | 25% | 1 | 7 | 9 of 9 | -1.50 |
| Depth and volume | $212m 30-day volume · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source$98m total value locked · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 25% | 2 | 7 | 8 of 9 | -1.25 |
| Chains and assets | 41 chains deployed · sourced · 2026-08-27 · source | 12% | 10 | 6 | 1 of 9 | +0.48 |
| How hard the capital works | — | 8% | 3 | 7 | 8 of 9 | -0.32 |
Measured 27 August 2026 · weights and method · decided by what traders actually paid, worth -1.50 points against the median
Has it been drained, and did anyone get paid back?: 3/10
Contract exploits with dates, amounts and — the question every other comparison skips — whether users were actually made whole. A DEX is a set of contracts holding pooled money, so this is the first question, not the fifth. Audit count is recorded but never scored on its own: Balancer V2 was among the most audited contract systems in DeFi and lost $128m to a rounding error in November 2025.
Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 5, which places it 8th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 30% weight that is 0.60 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 9, the worst 1.
What traders actually paid: 1/10
Computed by us, not read off a fee-tier page: thirty days of protocol fees divided by thirty days of volume, per venue, from public data. That single division exposes what routing, tier mix and pool design really cost, and it disagrees with the advertised tiers everywhere. It is not the whole cost of a trade — slippage and gas sit on top — but it is the part every comparison misstates.
Scored 1 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 9th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is 1.50 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 1.
Depth and volume: 2/10
Total value locked and thirty-day volume, both from public data at a stated timestamp. Depth is what decides slippage on a real trade, and volume is what proves the depth is usable rather than parked.
Scored 2 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 8th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 25% weight that is 1.25 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
Chains and assets: 10/10
The number of chains where the venue is actually deployed, weighted by whether volume genuinely flows there. A deployment on forty chains that trades on two is coverage on paper.
Scored 10 of 10 against a category median of 6, which places it 1st of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 12% weight that is 0.48 points above the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 2.
How hard the capital works: 3/10
Thirty-day volume divided by total value locked — how many times each dollar of liquidity turned over. Nobody publishes this, and it separates a venue whose pools are genuinely used from one sitting on idle incentive-farmed capital. It also predicts fee income per dollar of risk taken by liquidity providers.
Scored 3 of 10 against a category median of 7, which places it 8th of 9 among decentralised exchanges on this criterion. At a 8% weight that is 0.32 points below the median contribution of the weighted total. The best score in the category is 10, the worst 3.
Its nearest neighbours in this ranking
Incidents priced into this score
- 2023-04-09 — An approval-handling bug in the RouterProcessor2 contract let an attacker drain roughly $3.3m from wallets that had granted the router token approvals. Some funds were returned after white-hat negotiation. [users made whole: partial] [source]
Questions about this score
Why is SushiSwap so expensive to trade on?
+
0.6639% of volume, on our measurement — thirteen times Aerodrome and roughly four times Uniswap, for a nominally identical service. The rate reflects a volume mix concentrated in higher-fee pools on chains where it is often the only venue, and thin books that make price impact worse on top of the fee itself.
What was the SushiSwap router hack?
+
In April 2023 an approval-handling bug in the RouterProcessor2 contract allowed an attacker to drain roughly $3.3m from wallets that had granted the router token approvals. Some funds were returned after white-hat negotiation. The lesson generalises well beyond SushiSwap: an approval you granted to a router persists until you revoke it, and a newly deployed router is exactly where that exposure has repeatedly turned into a loss.
Is SushiSwap still worth using?
+
Only where nothing else is deployed. On any chain where Uniswap, Aerodrome or Orca is present, those venues are cheaper and deeper by margins that are not close. Its genuine value now is coverage of small chains that larger protocols have not bothered with.