DeFi is growing faster than ever
The decentralized finance economy has grown massively this year and as of the time of writing, the industry is now worth $9.017 billion, according to the on-chain data resource DeFi Pulse. Total Value Locked [TVL] essentially means the amount of money running through its smart contracts.
The industry has grown incredibly quickly with its TVL figures surging by more than 119% over the course of just one month.
With a large portion of DeFi-based applications, tokens, and services hosted on the Ethereum network, its native token, ETH locked in it has also surged to a new all-time high of 5.229 million. This, in turn, has reignited bullish projections in terms of ETH’s price which stood at $404, at the time of writing.
Race for first place in DeFi’s TVL intensifies
Recently ousting Maker for the position of the biggest DeFi protocol was Aave [which was previously known as Ethlend] with a dominance of 18.98% over the last 24-hours as its TVL [USD] reached $1.71 billion. One of the significant factors of Aave lending protocol outpacing previous front runners was its LEND token which soared more than 4500% since the beginning of the year.
Adding to the surging popularity was the recent development of the issuance of a license to Aave’s U.K. business entity, Aave Limited by the Electronic Money Institution.
Meanwhile, Maker settled for the second-biggest position with $1.43 billion locked in smart contracts. Trailing not far behind was Curve protocol with a figure of $1.27 billion.
This was followed by Yearn.Finance at $956.3 million. Interestingly while it neared the coveted league of $1 billion TVL protocols, its native token, YFI recently hit a new all-time high following its listing on Aave’s platform and a hint at a partnership with the crypto-derivative platform, FTX.
Referring to the collaboration news, Founder of the project, Andre Cronje tweeted,
Guess the cat is out of the bag, but just so that there is some expectation management, this is a long roadmap that we are working on, so it won't be anything anytime soon. But there will be something very sexy in the future https://t.co/QtxKUXLnma
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) August 28, 2020