The amount of collateral locked across various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has rebounded over the past two weeks or so, suggesting the sellers are running out of steam.
As the bearish pressure eases and the crypto market selloff appears to have abated, more collateral is being pumped back into DeFi.
Various DeFi analytics platforms are all in agreement that total value locked has steadily increased over the past few weeks while bitcoin and major altcoins have mostly traded sideways.
DeFiLlama is reporting a 20% gain in TVL across listed platforms, from late June when it dropped below $92 billion, to current levels which are just shy of $111 billion. DappRadar has seen a similar surge in TVL, which has gone up by 16% since late June to reach $89 billion today. Meanwhile, DeFiPulse which lists far fewer protocols has recorded a 12% gain over the same period to current levels of $54 billion. CoinGecko’s TVL figures show an increase of 24% since June 27 with a figure of $76 billion today.
DeFi in recovery
The TVL on Binance Smart Chain-based protocols has also seen an uptick from $17.1 billion on June 28 to $19.5 billion on July 13 according to BSCproject. The 14% gain is in line with the rest of the DeFi sector, suggesting that BSC is no longer undergoing growth at a faster pace.
The move suggests that those still holding crypto assets are preferring to invest in DeFi rather than sell to markets. The total crypto market cap itself has been relatively flat over the past two months, oscillating between $1.5 trillion and $1.7 trillion.
In terms of top DeFi protocols, the three analytics providers have differing results. DeFiLlama lists Curve Finance at the top with $9.3 billion, DappRadar has Uniswap leading the pack with $8.3 billion, and DeFiPulse favors Aave as the market leader with $10.5 billion in TVL.
Industry observers have also noted that the number DeFi users have hit a milestone of three million. However, this figure is likely to be an overestimate as observed by Alex Krüger who stated “there are multiple addresses per user. I’d guess the actual user number is in the 1,200,000-800,000 range.”
BTC exchange outflows increasing
One metric that backs these TVL gains up is the outflow from exchanges which has increased over the past fortnight. When investors and traders are preparing to sell, they normally move crypto assets into exchanges, which was what happened in April and May.
When investors and traders are accumulating, exchange outflows increase which is exactly what has been happening according to on-chain analytics provider Glassnode in its weekly insights report.