Fantom [FTM] has toppled Binance Smart Chain [BSC] to become the third-largest blockchain in decentralized finance or DeFi, in total value, locked [TVL], as per data provided by analytics platform DeFiLlama. The news assumes significance as the broader crypto market is currently engulfed by bearish sentiment. At the time of writing, FTM’s TVL has risen by more than an impressive 60% over the past week to reach $12.41 billion.
For the record, Fantom is an open-source smart contract blockchain that now hosts 6.15% of about US$200 billion of DeFi activities. Interestingly, Binance Smart Chain used to command over 20% of TVL last May riding on the popularity of decentralized exchange [DEX] PancakeSwap but has now retraced to 6.05%.
Meanwhile, on the price front, Fantom’s native token FTM had mirrored much of this growth over the past month but has also succumbed to the recent market-wide sell-off, losing more than 35% over the weekend to trade at $2.10 at the time of publishing this news, as per data obtained from CoinMarketCap.
With respect to the performance of the overall market, all other major blockchains, such as TVL king Ethereum [ETH] and even second in command Terra [LUNA], witnessed double-digit falls over the span of just seven days. In fact, market leader Ethereum’s total value locked count has dropped by nearly 20% over the same time frame to a four-month low of US$116.5 billion, decreasing to a record low at 58%, from 94% last January.
Fantom [FTM] now the preferred DeFi choice ?
Transactions generating on Fantom have surged tremendously surpassing that of Avalanche [AVAX] a week ago. More than 1 million transactions were processed on the FTM network on 19 January 2022 even though Avalanche locked up more value than FTM on DeFi applications at $11 billion compared to $6 billion and hosted 127 DeFi protocols versus Fantom’s 112.
As a matter of fact, Interest in Fantom grew significantly over the past week as Daniele Sestagalli and Andre Cronje – developers who are well known for launching protocols on AVAX announced working on an upcoming project that will deploy on the blockchain. Analysts at Delphi Digital noted,
As the narrative rotates from Avalanche to Fantom, it’s not surprising to see it reflected in transactions. Opportunistic capital moved over to yield farm on Fantom with high yields on stablecoins of around 30-60% APR [annual percentage rate].