Report: Shapella activation spurs growth in the DeFi segment

Against the backdrop of activation of the Shapella hard fork in the Ethereum network, total value locked (TVL) in the smart contracts of decentralized applications rose in April above $90 billion — the first time since September 2022, according to a ForkLog report.

For the month, the figure nevertheless edged down to $83.37 billion. Ethereum remained the leader, accounting for almost 67%.

Liquid staking protocols first surpassed decentralized exchanges in their share of total DeFi TVL. Projects in this category accounted for more than 21% or $17.78 billion in April. The metric rose 7% since March.

Top DeFi projects by locked-in funds were: Lido ($11.76 billion), MarketDAO ($7.32 billion), Aave ($6.96 billion), Curve Finance ($4.61 billion) and Uniswap ($3.59 billion).

However, despite the TVL rise, the prices of most DeFi assets moved into the red. Solar (SXP) posted the worst performance, with its price down by nearly 41%.

The PancakeSwap token (CAKE) also fell by 31%, despite a series of major announcements. In particular, the team presented the third version of the protocol and proposed to shift the project’s tokenomics to a deflationary model.

On-chain activity is led by the Tron network. In April the blockchain processed an average of 8.4 million transactions per day, almost 20% higher than March.

Notably, the L2 solution Arbitrum surpassed Ethereum in average daily transactions — 1.2 million to 1.0 million.

In late April, analysts at Dune recorded a record weekly inflow of assets into the Ethereum deposit contract following the activation of Shapella.