Current DeFi Market Goes Down as TVL Drops Below $200B

• Curve, an Ethereum-based DeX liquidity pool,  dominates by 7.98% with its TVL.  
• Average monthly revenue raised by DeFi protocols in April 2022 is $159.24M.

The DeFi market surged in the summer of 2020. By late May 2020, its total value locked (TVL) rose up to a billion and the sector continued to gain momentum. New projects flocked into the sector and diverted the attention of investors towards DeFi.  According to statistics, the TVL in DeFi protocols was recorded at $203.01 billion on Saturday, and today, at the time of writing, it was recorded as $199.32 billion and this indicates a loss of 18%.

Ethereum’s smart contracts opened the gateway into the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. MakerDAO, an Ethereum-based crypto project, is the pioneer for every DeFi project. It was launched in 2015 which allowed users to generate DAI, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, from the ether. Lending, borrowing, and staking protocols became a major part of the sector. Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) aided DeFi in establishing an open financial market in the crypto world.

DeFi’s Underperformance

DeFi protocols constructed on the Ethereum blockchain dominate the market by holding, at the time of writing, $142.84 billion in its TVL which accounts for 57% of the total. Curve Finance, its native DEX liquidity protocol, lost 11.64% in the last 30 days-TVL and now stands at $19.94 billion. Terra-based DeFi protocols are the straight contenders, locking in $31.73 billion. Its native Anchor protocol which is the only DeFi protocol in the top 5 gained 2.19% and holds $19.55 billion in its TVL.

In March 2022, the average monthly revenue made by the DeFi protocols was $171.39 million and it decreased by 7.089% to $159.24 million in April. Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have also stepped down in terms of volume traded. So far, the maximum peak of $200.45 billion was attained in November 2021. Last month, it fell below $92.18 billion. According to DeFi analytics, Uniswap (v3) held the maximum share of volume of  $39.02 billion, followed by other DEXs such as Pancake Swap ($13.27 billion), Uniswap (v2) with $13.27 billion, and Dodo with $5.85 billion.