UNI vs AAVE Whales: Exchange Flow, Wallets and Overlap Compared

Uniswap and Aave are the two DeFi protocols most people name first: one is the largest decentralized exchange on Ethereum, the other the largest lending market. Their governance tokens, UNI and AAVE, get compared constantly, usually on price, fees or protocol revenue. This page compares them on something narrower and more observable: what Deep Blue Alpha’s tracked whale wallets did with each token over the last 30 days, and how that changed in the most recent week.

The short version is that UNI is the bigger whale story by a wide margin, but AAVE’s month was more one-directional for most of the window, and the two pulled apart at the very end.

UNI vs AAVE: the side-by-side numbers

Which had more whale activity? UNI, clearly. It led on dollars (about 4.1 times AAVE’s), on wallets (150 vs 96) and on whale moves (1,094 vs 482). The average UNI whale move was also larger, about $256.2K against $142.7K for AAVE. Because UNI’s market cap was only about 1.85 times AAVE’s, the gap holds after scaling: whale moves equaled 5.78% of UNI’s market cap and 2.62% of AAVE’s. None of that says which token is preferable to own; it says where tracked large wallets were busier.

Two-way flow: why UNI’s net hides a lot of deposits

Net numbers compress a lot of information. Leaving exchanges is conventionally read as the accumulation-side move, because coins move away from the place they can be sold quickly; arriving on exchanges is the distribution-side read. Both are heuristics about past flow, not statements of intent.

On that reading, both tokens leaned toward the accumulation side over the month. But the way they got there was different. UNI’s whales deposited $117.86M to exchanges and withdrew $162.32M. That is a lot of movement in both directions, and the 57.9% withdrawal share is the closest to balanced of the two tokens. AAVE’s whales deposited $25.29M and withdrew $43.41M, a 63.2% withdrawal share: smaller in size but more lopsided.

Did the latest week match the week before?

Not for both. This is where the pair is most interesting, because the 30-day picture and the 7-day picture point different ways for AAVE.

UNI tilted further toward the accumulation side. Whale dollars moved fell 37.9% week over week, from $78.55M to $48.76M, but deposits fell faster than withdrawals. The withdrawal share rose from 56.7% to 65.0% and net leaving exchanges rose from $10.51M to $14.60M.

AAVE moved back toward balance. Whale dollars fell 19.9%, from $31.63M to $25.33M, while deposits rose from $9.78M to $10.94M. The withdrawal share dropped from 69.0% to 56.8%, and net leaving exchanges fell from $12.01M to $3.44M. A single $2.95M AAVE deposit on October 7 was 11.7% of the latest week’s AAVE whale dollars.

One more detail on timing: AAVE’s whale activity was back-loaded. The last 14 days of the window (September 27 to October 10) held 82.8% of the 30-day AAVE whale dollars. For UNI the same two weeks held 45.4%, so UNI’s large September activity carried more of its month.

Price alongside the flow

Price and whale flow did not line up neatly for either token, which is a useful caution against reading exchange flow as a price explanation. Over the 30 days to October 11, 2026, CoinGecko data showed AAVE up 34.2% and UNI up 26.5%. Over the final seven days both were lower: UNI down 13.3% and AAVE down 5.4%.

Set that against the weekly table above. In the latest week UNI had the steeper price decline of the two, yet its whale flow tilted further toward coins leaving exchanges, with the withdrawal share rising to 65.0%. AAVE had the milder decline, yet its withdrawal share fell to 56.8% and its net leaving exchanges shrank to $3.44M. The two series moved independently over this window. Exchange flow records where large holders moved coins; it does not record why, and the same week can show coins leaving exchanges while price falls, or the reverse. Both tokens also remained far below their all-time highs: UNI 82.7% below and AAVE 74.3% below as of October 11, 2026.

The largest single moves

Neither token depended on one wallet. UNI’s three largest moves were 7.8% of its 30-day whale dollars and AAVE’s were 11.1% — low concentration compared with memecoins, where a single move can be a quarter of a month. That makes both tokens’ monthly totals a reasonable description of broad whale behavior rather than one address.

The direction of those top moves is still worth noting. In both tokens, the two largest single moves were deposits to exchanges. UNI’s two largest deposits together came to $15.80M, 13.4% of all UNI deposits for the month. The month still finished net leaving exchanges in both tokens, so the largest individual moves ran against the overall lean. The shortened wallet 0x1d4896…0270 behind the $7.87M UNI deposit on September 21 also made the largest PEPE deposit in Deep Blue Alpha’s data that same day, which shows how the same address can surface in very different tokens’ flow on the same day.

39 wallets moved both UNI and AAVE

Over the 30-day window, 39 tracked wallets moved both tokens. That is 40.6% of AAVE’s 96 whale wallets and 26.0% of UNI’s 150. Across both tokens there were 207 distinct wallets, so roughly one in five was active in both.

The practical reading: a large slice of AAVE’s whale activity comes from wallets that are also active in UNI. That is consistent with DeFi governance tokens often sitting side by side in the same wallets, though the data itself only shows the overlap, not who the wallets are or why they moved. It also means that when a broad DeFi rebalance happens, both tokens’ exchange flow can move at the same time for the same reason.

The limit of the stat: a wallet in the overlap may have pulled UNI off an exchange and sent AAVE to one in the same week. Shared activity is not shared direction.

What UNI and AAVE are

Both are ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, which is why both are fully visible to Deep Blue Alpha’s tracker. Single-token deep dives are in the UNI whale report and the AAVE whale report, and the wider sector view is in DeFi blue-chip whale activity and on the live DeFi whale board.

How to run this comparison yourself

This page is refreshed monthly. Between updates, the live token pages show the same data.

1. Normalize for size

Open /token/UNI and /token/AAVE on the same window and divide whale dollars by market cap. Raw totals always favor the bigger token.

2. Read both directions, not just the net

Write down withdrawals and deposits separately, then compute net leaving exchanges and the withdrawal share. UNI’s $117.86M of deposits would be invisible in a net-only view.

3. Compare the latest week with the week before

Thirty-day direction and seven-day direction can disagree, as AAVE’s did this month. Check both before describing either token’s flow.

4. Look for repeat and shared wallets

Scan each token’s largest moves for wallets that recur, within one token or across both. A repeat wallet means part of the total is one address.

5. Check the flow type before describing it

If DEX swaps are a small share of whale dollars, as here, describe the flow as withdrawn from or deposited to exchanges. The exchange inflows and outflows guide covers the vocabulary in detail.

Methodology

Figures are whale-scoped: only wallets on Deep Blue Alpha’s tracked whale list, about 21,880 Ethereum wallets at this update, are counted. Exchange-flow rows are retained for 30 days, so the September 11 to October 10, 2026 window is the full available history. All windows use UTC. “Whale $ moved” adds exchange withdrawals, exchange deposits and DEX swaps by tracked wallets; for reference, the DEX portion was $21.8K of DEX swap buys and $114.8K of DEX swap sells for UNI, and $51.7K and $48.2K for AAVE. Market caps, prices, price changes and all-time-high distances are from CoinGecko at October 11, 2026, 18:30 UTC. Wallets are shown shortened and are not attributed to owners.

Bottom line

Over September 11 to October 10, 2026, tracked whales were far more active in UNI than in AAVE — $280.32M against $68.80M, and 5.78% of market cap against 2.62%. Both tokens finished the month with coins leaving exchanges on net, $44.45M of UNI and $18.12M of AAVE, but UNI’s flow was heavily two-way and AAVE’s was concentrated in the final two weeks.

The latest week split them: UNI’s withdrawal share rose to 65.0% while AAVE’s fell to 56.8%. And 39 wallets were active in both, about four in ten of AAVE’s whale wallets. Those are observations about what already happened; any decision built on them is a separate one.

Related reading

UNI Whale Report 2026

A single-token deep dive on Uniswap whale wallets.

AAVE Whale Report 2026

A single-token deep dive on Aave whale wallets.

DeFi Blue-Chip Whale Activity

How whale flow spread across the major DeFi governance tokens.

Exchange Inflows & Outflows Explained

The framework behind withdrawal share and net leaving exchanges.

PEPE vs SHIB: Whale Flow Compared

The two largest Ethereum memecoins, side by side on whale flow.

LINK vs ONDO: Whale Flow Compared

Oracle network vs tokenized treasuries on tracked whale flow.

UNI live whale data → AAVE live whale data → DeFi whale board → Governance token whales → Sentiment trends →