Statistics show that the decentralized finance (defi) economy has grown massively this year as the total value locked (TVL) in defi recently surpassed $4 billion. Between dex platforms, derivatives, stablecoins, lending, and non-fungible asset creation the second quarter of 2020 has propelled the Ethereum network to new heights.
Decentralized finance (defi) is a term used often these days as it describes a disintermediation trend in the world of finance. A very large portion of defi applications, tokens, and platforms are hosted on the Ethereum (ETH) network and defi’s massive growth has made the price of ETH swell.
The defi ecosystem just celebrated a milestone as the total value locked (TVL) within the economy is $4.22 billion today.
Most of the defi growth took place in 2020 as a number of projects have seen significant demand. For instance, a report written by Tokeninsight details that the defi TVL dropped to $500 million on March 12, otherwise known as ‘Black Thursday.’
Since then, however, the defi TVL jumped 744% from mid-March to August 3. Tokeninsight’s report shows defi’s “explosive growth” stemmed from the yield farming ecosystem. Alongside this, the TVL was also bolstered by defi projects with high lending interest.
According to stats from Defi Pulse, the top six defi platforms include Maker (lending), Compound (lending), Synthetix (derivatives), Aave (lending), Instadapp (lending), and Curve Finance (dex).
Out of the $4.22 billion, the project Maker has a dominance of around 31.9% today. Tokeninsight’s 2020 Q2 Defi Industry Research Report also reveals the number of defi users has swelled immensely from 100,000 users in January to 230,000 users by the mid-year-end.
The research findings indicate that derivatives and oracle projects swelled in 2020 as well and Synthetix (SNX) has been the “most successful derivatives idea so far.” Furthermore, decentralized exchanges (dex) saw an increase in demand as well in the second quarter of 2020.
Right now the most popular dex platforms include Curve, Balancer, 0x, Dydx, Kyber, Bancor, IDEX, Oasis, and the Gnosis Protocol.
Dune Analytics data shows that dex platforms saw $213 million trades during the last 24 hours. There’s been $1.7 billion in trade volume during the last seven days and growth has jumped 5% this week so far.
A number of defi projects have cushioned the TVL today, but a large portion of the recent demand stems from yield farming and flash loan concepts.
Yield farming is a relatively new way to leverage applications like Aave or Compound in order to invoke a yield-generating pasture. A flash loan is the ability to leverage uncollateralized defi capital in order to profit from a well-executed dex trade.
The analysts at Tokeninsight Research Johnson Xu, Norah Song, Harper Li, and Fanger Chou believe that defi presents a “significant innovation” in the crypto space.
The report also stresses that the economy is still learning from traditional counterparts. The researchers think that the defi space has a “unique value proposition” going forward.
“Strong growth potential and innovative concepts can drive the broader cryptocurrency market to another level,” the researcher’s report concludes. “At some point, proof-of-stake, centralized finance, and decentralized finance will come together to form an enormous cryptocurrency financial ecosystem to achieve the potential of ‘money legos.’”