DeFi Bulletin: TVL Keeps Growing as DEX Trading Volume Surges to $85 Billion

The DeFi sector continues to attract heightened attention from crypto investors. ForkLog has gathered the most important events and news from the past weeks in this digest.

Key Metrics of the DeFi Segment

Total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols rose to $52.7 billion. Led by Lido with $21.1 billion, the second and third places belong to Maker ($8.2 billion) and AAVE ($6.5 billion), respectively.

TVL in Ethereum applications remained at the same level — $28.3 billion. Trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) over the last 30 days stood at $85.5 billion.

Uniswap continues to dominate the non-custodial exchange market, accounting for 55.5% of total turnover. The second DEX by trading volume is PancakeSwap (17.8%), the third Trader Joe (5.2%).

Uniswap Trading Volume Tops $450 Billion for the Year

In 2023, the cumulative value of swaps on the DEX Uniswap reached $454 billion. February was the record month, at $73 billion.

The total number of trades executed by users amounted to 163 million.

Over the year, Uniswap recorded 2.89 million new wallets and opened 3.33 million liquidity provider positions.

Among other achievements, the exchange team noted:

• launch of the UniswapX liquidity aggregator;
• development of the fourth version of the protocol;
• integration of new networks;
• availability of the app in stores for iOS and Android.

Since January, the platform has added support for 18 fiat currencies and 7 languages.

TVL in the Blast Network Exceeds $1 Billion

On December 26, the total value of assets locked in the L2-solution Blast surpassed the $1 billion mark. The protocol reached the milestone in 35 days — faster than any competitor.

Launched on November 22 the project is a Layer-2 network built on Ethereum, offering a passive income of 4-5% per year. However, Blast still lacks any infrastructure beyond the cross-chain contract.

If the protocol had a mainnet, it would rank second by TVL among L2 networks and sixth among all blockchains.

According to Blast, the platform has just over 85,000 users. This implies that each user locked about $11,700 on average.

Lisk Transforms into an Ethereum-based L2 Solution

The 2016-founded crypto platform Lisk transforms into an Ethereum-based layer-2 solution with support from Optimism and Gelato.

The new network will be built on the OP Stack framework. The transformation will leverage Gelato’s Rollup-as-a-Service platform.

The L2 solution will focus on real-world assets (RWA) and decentralized networks of physical infrastructure (DePIN).

The developers say the move to L2 is largely driven by the broad adoption of EVM systems. A testnet for the updated platform is planned for the first quarter of 2024.

The team also plans to conduct airdrop tokens for LSK to stimulate activity in the new network. Detailed information on the distribution mechanism will be released ahead of the mainnet launch.

PancakeSwap Community Proposes Reducing CAKE Emissions

The PancakeSwap DEX community published a proposal to reduce the total CAKE supply from 750 million to 450 million.

At the time of writing, CAKE’s circulating supply is ~263.8 million, according to CoinGecko.

Developers believe that the lower cap will help to:

• driving market share across all networks and supporting the veCAKE model;
• confidence in the future CAKE supply;
• moving away from the hyperinflationary tokenomics of PancakeSwap;
• providing sufficient flexibility for growth.

Also on ForkLog:

• KyberSwap cut 50% of staff after a hack.
• A hacker withdrew assets valued at $1.1 million from Levana Protocol liquidity pools.
• December inflows to the Swell liquid-staking protocol exceeded $125 million.