Top DeFi Tokens Explode as TVL Nears $14 Billion

It’s an all-around green day in crypto land. Bitcoin price has surged beyond $18,000, closing the gap with its previous all-time high of $20,000. ETH just rocketed past $500 for the first time in two years.

But apart from the usual cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens are sitting on gains as a majority of them exploded in valuations over the past couple of days.

Top 100 DeFi Coins Register Explosive Weekly Gains

A bull market pulls every asset out of the bearish rut. The same is true for cryptocurrency markets as well. However, the scenario here is a lot more dramatic than traditional financial markets. And even within the digital currency markets, while the mainstream crypto section comprising of bitcoin, ether (ETH), and other usual coins have logged decent gains, the DeFi market has gone absolutely nuts.

Data shows that many amongst the top 100 DeFi cryptocurrencies have posted explosive gains upwards of 50 percent, most notably Aave (AAVE), Yearn Finance (YFI), Reserve Rights Token (RSR), Sushi (SUSHI), Thorchain (RUNE), Curve DAO Token (CRV), etc.

Aave is the fourth largest DeFi protocol in the lot, and its native token AAVE has registered a weekly jump of almost 54 percent. Over the last 24 hours, the token is up 10 percent. Yearn Finance’s YFI token, which accrued considerable popularity for surpassing bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,000, is up 85 percent over the week after dropping to sub-$10,000 levels with almost 10 percent gains in 24 hours.

SUSHI Went All Out With A 150 Percent Jump

However, the most dramatic upsurge in price (out of all top 100 DeFi coins) was registered by SUSHI. The once disgraced decentralized exchange (DEX) is standing head to head in competition with Uniswap on the DeFi protocol leaderboard. And according to Coingecko, its native SUSHI token posted a near 150 percent over the last one week.

This is probably due to a mass exodus of users from Uniswap. Primarily due to the discontinuation of liquidity incentives, which in turn led to a dramatic fall in on-exchange liquidity for Uniswap. SushiSwap and other competitors gained massively in the process, as can be seen from the charts below.

Uniswap Experiences Tremendous Drop in Liquidity, Source: DeFi PulseSushiSwap Experiences Rise in Liquidity, Source: DeFi Pulse

Apart from the DeFi Lending protocol above, bZx that fell prey to multiple hacks also noticed its token log near 130 percent weekly gains and 34 percent daily gains. Curve DAO Token’s CRV token also logged almost 70 percent weekly gains, with a 30 percent daily rise.

Total Value Locked (USD) in DeFi Protocol Crosses $14 Billion

While DeFi tokens went bananas on the back of a bullish crypto market run-up, DeFi protocols overall registered inflows, and the total value locked is now north of $14 billion.

Total USD Value Locked in DeFi Surpasses $14 Billion, Source: DeFi Pulse.

Lending protocols are the top trending DeFi projects, with Maker taking the lead with 18 percent dominance. It experienced a 4 percent jump in fund infusion over the last 24 hours. This took the protocol’s total USD liquidity close to $2.5 billion.

Compound and Aave are the two other lending protocols that make the top 5. Along with them, Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) has soared in popularity as investors look to put their BTC to ‘good use’ by tokenizing them on Ethereum. As of writing, there are more than 120,000 bitcoins tokenized as WBTC on Ethereum.