Value locked in DeFi grows 936% in 1 year, NFT sector strengthens: DappRadar

Published at: Oct. 1, 2021

New research by analytics platform DappRadar has revealed the extent to which decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) markets have grown this year.

In its Thursday “Value Flow Report,” DappRadar reported that recent trends have seen sizable growth in NFTs and blockchain gaming but that DeFi is also still generating substantial value.

“Although the value flows to some extent from DeFi to NFTs, it appears that both categories are generating value independently.”

The research delved into Ethereum-based DeFi, which is still the dominant force in the sector despite the emergence of rival networks such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Solana and Avalanche. Value has continued to flow in with wrapped Ether (wETH) up 400% since July 2020 and stablecoins Tether (USDT) and Dai increasing by 1,300% and 500% over the same period, respectively.

DappRadar currently reports a total value locked of $114.8 billion, which is an increase of 936% since the same time last year. The report added that the industry’s total value locked (TVL) grew 75% between July 23 and Sept. 5, reaching a peak of $195 billion across all chains.

DappRadar did suggest that using TVL was not a good way to measure the movement of value.

“Whilst TVL is one of the most important metrics to assess the current state of Decentralized Finance, it is not a metric to understand value flow movement. The TVL is completely dependent on the underlying asset, thus, providing a false optic from the value perspective.”

At the time of compiling the research, 68% of all of the collateral locked in DeFi was based on Ethereum. BSC is the second-largest blockchain in terms of TVL, with $17.8 billion currently locked, or 15.5% of the total. Decentralized exchange PancakeSwap dominates DeFi on BSC with $8.7 billion in TVL. The third-largest chain in terms of DeFi collateral on DappRadar is Polygon with $2.7 billion locked. However, the report did not include data for Solana, which has $9.5 billion locked, according to alternative analytics website Defi Llama.

The report noted that NFTs saw record volumes in August, with a total of $5.2 billion worth traded. Ethereum is also the dominant network in the NFT scene with 90% of all the volume on its blockchain.

NFT marketplace OpenSea is the market leader, and 99.7% of its trades happen on Ethereum despite the platform offering USD Coin (USDC), Dai and Polygon (MATIC) options for sellers. The report concluded that NFT growth has been organic and has not leached a lot of liquidity from DeFi protocols.

“All in all, it appears that the value in DeFi is growing constantly, whilst NFTs were able to generate a major value flow in August.”

As reported by Cointelegraph, crypto investors are moving more of their assets into DeFi protocols, and as China continues to crack down on the industry, regulatory fears grow in the United States.