SideShift.ai Weekly Report | 12th - 18th May 2026

May 20, 20266 min read

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

Highlights

SideShift logged $5.55m in gross volume alongside a shift count of 6,409, with average shift size of $866.
188,904 XAI ($16,418) distributed to stakers at a 7.14% average APY, with the 7-day high of 10.72% landing on May 18th.
PAXG jumped to $407k from $555 the week prior, its second-largest week of 2026.
Top affiliates lifted combined affiliate share to 22.5% from 15.7%, contributing $1.25m on the week.

General Business News

BTC couldn't hold the $80k line it reclaimed last week, drifting back into the high $70k’s by Sunday after long liquidations and ETF outflows compounded through the back half of the week. The bigger headline came on Friday with Jerome Powell officially closing out his eight-year run as Fed Chair and Kevin Warsh sworn in to succeed him, while HYPE quietly stole the show on the price side, climbing back toward $48 on the back of Bitwise's BHYP ETF debut and the launch of the first SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual on Hyperliquid. Closing out the week, three separate cross-chain exploits in four days drained close to $100m combined, capped by Echo Protocol's $76m eBTC mint on Monday, the largest of the three by some distance and a tough blow for users and protocols caught in the fallout.

A quieter showing followed the run we saw last time out, with SideShift recording $5.55m in gross volume (-34.2%), settling back into the kind of mid-$5m range that has defined much of the year and giving back the majority of last week's gain. The pullback traced almost entirely to user shifting easing -22.1% to $4.34m, with liquidity shifting following naturally on its heels at -57.6% to $1.21m as the rebalancing demand that came packaged with last week's cbBTC whale flow simply didn't repeat. Instead, the top user pair was PAXG/DAI(ERC-20) with $403k, a notable appearance for gold-backed flow at the top of the leaderboard, with BTC/ETH and AVAX/BTC following at $327k and $187k, respectively. Compared to recent periods where one pair has comfortably cleared the half-million mark, the field was much more evenly distributed this time around, with no single shift pair dominating the week. The $10k+ band reflected that change cleanly, dropping to $2.81m from $5.89m, while the average shift size came in at $866 versus last week's $1,254.

Gross shift count came in at 6,409 (-4.8%) for a daily average of 916, a much shallower drop than volume and a sign that user engagement broadly held its shape even as volume scaled down. The sub-$100 band held at 3,809 shifts, almost unchanged from last week's 3,970 and continuing to anchor the bottom of the count distribution as it has for months. The count of $10k+ shifts told the same story as the volume band, as they fell to 100 shifts from last week's 206, while the $50k+ band landed at 15 against 27 the week prior.

Among top coins BTC led at $2.12m (-45.3%), though the user-side activity held up relatively normal upon closer inspection. User deposits came in at $889k (+5.7%), well within the recent monthly range, while settlements at $518k (-55.2%) returned to a level consistent with most of 2026. The bulk of the headline drop traced back to the liquidity-shifting tail from last week's whale flow drying up, leaving the underlying BTC user pattern looking healthier than the top-line figure suggests. ETH was the genuine outperformer among the top 5 at $1.17m, with deposits flat at $486k (+0.4%) and settlements climbing to $466k (+18.7%), marking one of its better settle weeks of the year. The two sides moving in sync stood out in an environment which saw most coins skew heavily one way, and represented somewhat of a reversal from the laggard tag we placed on ETH in last week's writeup.

The stablecoin field reshuffled meaningfully. USDT(TRC20) gave back the gains it built last week, falling -59.9% to $1.01m as both deposits and settlements halved off elevated bases. L-USDT and USDT(ERC-20) meanwhile moved in the opposite direction, climbing to $991k (+19.5%) and $823k (+25.4%) respectively, with both sides of the flow contributing to each. USDC(ERC-20) was the bigger story, collapsing -84.7% to $409k after last week's run to $2.68m and dropping of the top 5 entirely, an unwind also tied to the disappearance of whale shifting. Outside of the top 5 picture, PAXG announced itself with a $407k week from a baseline of just $555 the prior period, its second largest footprint of 2026, and entirely related to the top user shift pair mentioned earlier.

Alternate network volume combined for $3.24m (-33.7%), tracking the platform's overall pullback almost step for step. The Tron network carried the bulk of the decline, falling -54.6% to $1.20m as USDT(TRC20) more than halved on the week to $1.01m and continues to claim responsibility for the overwhelming majority of activity on the network. The Solana network held up notably better at $904k (-20.4%), settling into a fairly tight $900k to $1.14m corridor week after week which looks increasingly like a stable baseline, despite being a far cry from weekly sums generated 6-12 months ago. Avalanche ended at $249k from $7k the week prior, related to the reappearance of AVAX/BTC user pair noted earlier, and carving a pattern that's quietly become a recurring feature of the network. Polygon was the steadiest at $346k (-2.8%), one of the smallest changes in either direction across the group.

Top affiliate volume held up far better than the overall platform, combining for $1.25m (-6.0%) against a -34.2% gross volume decline and pointing to a base of activity that remained largely unaffected by the absence of large scale shifts. Our first place affiliate snapped back to $311k (+38.8%), reversing two consecutive weeks of decline that had taken it well off its late-April peak. Second place moved up a rung to $152k (+6.3%), the only one of the top three to grow for a third week running and continuing a steady, unflashy build that has now spanned most of Q2. Third place gave back -27.9% to $125k after slotting in at second last time, though still well clear of the $30k baseline it occupied before its late-April breakout. On the count side, our third place affiliate retained top spot at 473 shifts (-16.4%), with first and second tucked in close behind at 332 and 362.Combined affiliate share of platform volume climbed to 22.5%, up from 15.7% last week and the cleanest single read on how the week's broader slowdown failed to reach the affiliate base.

XAI Weekly Performance & Staking

XAI stakers received 188,904 XAI ($16,418) to the staking vault over the week at an average APY of 7.14%, with both figures decreasing from last week's marks. The 7-day high landed on May 18th at 10.72% APY against a backdrop of $1.07m in daily shift volume, with 39,963 XAI delivered on the day. XAI's price held quietly at $0.0869 (+0.4% on the 7-day), with market cap closing the week at $13.89m (+1.02%).

Additional XAI updates:

Total Value Staked: 143,375,587 XAI (+0.11%)
Total Value Locked: $12,443,824 (-0.13%)

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