The last bull run brought us DeFi. It started small but then a ton of new apps and protocols emerged. A lot of them copycats with just small tweaks. The bear market has been especially brutal towards these protocols. A lot of them died. But a few remained and are still around. They provide vital services to the crypto industry that were not possible a few years ago. Lending, trading, staking etc, the basics of the financial industry.
Let’s take a look at the top DeFi protocols and compare them.
We will be looking into the following protocols:
- Uniswap
- Jupiter
- PancakeSwap
- Lido
- RocketPool
- Curve
- AAVE
- MakerDAO
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 Dune Analytics, DeFi Lama, 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.
Lido comes on the top here by a lot with 35B. For those who don’t know it is a protocol for staking Ethereum. Lido has been a dominant protocol providing this service. 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.
EigenLayer is a newcomer in the game and it is again a protocol that is connected to staking ETH or in it case restaking.
Aave the lending protocol is on the third spot with 14B, then comes MakerDAO with the DAI stablecoin, followed by Uniswap as a DEX.
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.
Uniswap comes on the top here with 2.5B daily trading volume. Next is the Solana protocol Jupiter with 600M. At one point in the past Jupiter even surpassed Uniswap for a few days in trading volume. More Solana protocols follow, Orca, Raydium. Curve and PancakeSwap down the list.
We can notice here that unlike the TVL rank, where all the protocols are from Ethereum, Solana has top dogs as well. Also, Thorchain as a multichain defi protocol has managed to climb in the top 10.
Numbers of Users
Here is the chart.
Jupiter is dominating this chart now with more than 800k DAUs. A few months ago, Pancake was on the top, but the Solana DEX aggregator has emerged as the number one for activity. Fees are low on Solana so probably a lot of wallets are bots, but it is still impressive in the number of users.
Pancake is in the second spot with close to 200k DAUs, followed by Uniswap with around 70k users. Uniswap has build it versions on other EVM chains like Arbitrum, Base, etc and most of the users are now coming from there, but the TVL remains on Ethereum.
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 the stablecoins. This is of no surprise since Ethereum is the platform where most of them are built, and it is the second largest crypto.
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. RocketPool, another ETH staking protocol is on the second spot.
Aave, with a broader use case with lending, is on the third 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 move all the time trough trading.
Market Cap
At the end the market cap. Here is the chart.
Uniswap remains the strongest defi application in terms of market cap. It is now valued at 8.5B. MakerDAO is in the second spot, followed closely by Thorchain. Interesting RocketPool has now flipped Lido in market valuation. Jupiter is also now a top valued DeFi protocol that has emerged in the last year.
All the best
@dalz