There are now few defi apps that have established themselves since the last bull market and continue to work and operate. The DEXs, lending platforms, liquid staking to mention a few. Some new things are emerging from time to time as well. We now have a working defi industry.
How are the defi apps doing under the current market conditions?
Let’s take a look at the top DeFi protocols and compare them.
We will be looking into the following protocols:
- AAVE
- Lido
- Uniswap
- Jupiter
- PancakeSwap
- MakerDAO
- Ethena
- Pendle
- Raydium
- etc
There are different types of applications above, like DEXs, lending protocols, staking protocols etc. It can be a challenge to find a common denominator for all of them to compare them to each other, but we will be looking at the following parameters:
- TVL
- Trading volume
- Users
- Top trading pair on each platform
- Fully Diluted Valuation / TVL Ratio
- Market cap
The data is extracted from multiple sources like DeFi Lama, Dune Analytics, protocols web pages etc.
Total Value Locked TVL
One of the key metrics for the defi protocols is the total value locked TVL.
Here is the chart.
Aave comes on the top here by a lot with 25B. It’s a borrow and lend protocol so obviously this type of defi activity has some demand. The staking protocol Lido comes on the second spot now. For a long time it was number one. Users stake any amount of Ethereum and get a return on it from the Ethereum staking rewards. There are multiple protocols that provide this service, but Lido is on the top.
Another liquid staking platform, EigenLayer, comes on the third sport etc.
When it comes to TVL, all the dominant players are coming from Ethereum.
Trading Volume
The trading volume is not 100% applicable for all the apps above, as it is most a DEXs parameter, but we can have a look at the lending protocols as well, in terms of deposits and withdrawals of collateral.
Here is the chart.
The DEXs are dominant when it comes to trading volume. This is understandable since it is their prime goal.
Uniswap and Pancake are in the top here. At one point, the Raydium platform was with the highest trading activity, especially during the meme craze at the end of 2024. We can notice the Solana platforms Rayium, Meteora and Orca come after Uniswap and Pancake.
It’s interesting that Pancake is now ranking quite high after a period of down activity on the BSC chain.
Aerodrome a DEX based on the Coinbase, Base chain is also in the top DeFi protocols now.
Numbers of Users
Here is the chart.
Uniswap has grown a lot in DAUs and is now the number one. This is mostly because of its expansion to other L2 chains, like Base, Arbitrum, etc, where the fees are lower.
Raydium, the Solana based DEX is next with somewhere around 700k DAUs. Jupiter is in the third spot followed by Pancake. A mix in the top DEXs with protocols from Ethereum, BSC and Solana.
We can notice that the protocols with the highest TVL actually have a small amount of users, meaning the users there are playing with large sums.
Top Pairs
What tokens are traded/used the most on each platform? Here is the chart.
As we can see most of the platforms have Ethereum and staked Ethereum (stETH) as the most used/liquid tokens, followed by SOL.
It’s basically a competition between Ethereum and Solana for the DeFi apps now.
Fully Diluted Valuation / TVL Ratio
This is one of the most used metrics for DeFi apps. It shows the ratio between the value of the project and assets under management so to speak (TVL). When this ratio is small it could mean that the project is undervalued and the opposite. For example, if a project has a 1B valuation and is managing 10B in assets (TVL) the ratio will be 0.1, that is considered low.
Here is the chart.
Lido comes on the top here, since it has a lot of assets under management, but it also has a specific function for staked assets.
Aave, with a broader use case with lending, is in the second spot with its FDV / TVL ratio, followed by MakerDAO.
We can notice that the staking and lending protocols are on the top in this metric, but this is more because of the nature of the apps, than their values. These apps are passive so to speak, unlike the DEXs where the assets are in pools where the tokens are being moved all the time trough trading.
Market Cap
At the end the market cap. Here is the chart.
Hyperliquid is on the top by market cap with an amazing 8B in market cap. Next are Aave and Uniswap with close to 4B. Ethena is above 2B, then comes Jupiter.
Obviously the DeFi space can be an attractive one with a lot of protocols with market valuation in multiple billions of dollars.
All the best
@dalz