The Nasdaq Crypto Index Europe™ (NCIE™) was created to provide European investors a reliable and dynamic crypto asset benchmark. A key feature of the NCIE’s methodology, designed to ensure the index is appropriate for professional investors, is a quarterly rebalance of the index constituents and its weightings. The latest NCIE reconstitution went effective September 1 at the market close.

The most notable change was the inclusion of Uniswap (UNI), a decentralized finance (DeFI) protocol that has generated a lot of recent attention. (The other change at the reconstitution was the removal of Litecoin.) Uniswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Ethereum blockchain, has performed well through the current “crypto winter” and its traded volumes and fees remain healthy.

The operational performance of a DeFi protocol during such turbulent times is especially noteworthy when compared to the performance of centralized finance or “CeFi” platforms that have faced significant challenges— and in some cases bankruptcy (e.g., Celsius, 3AC, Voyager)—during the same period. These CeFi platforms did not have the high level of transparency and lack of human intervention that are built into the structure of Uniswap and many other DeFi protocols. These “blue chip” DeFi protocols (including Uniswap) once again proved to be resilient during challenging times.