The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi already exceeds $128.000 billion, more than some traditional banks.
A report published by a16z, the venture capital firm of Andresseen Horowitz, on the current state of cryptocurrencies, blockchain and decentralized finance platforms, notes that DeFi would be in the top 31 banks worldwide, taking into account the value of its TVL.
The data, which were taken on May 12, indicate that the DeFi TVL is at $128.000 billion. However, this data was already affected by the collapse of Terra and UST. In this sense, according to information offered by DeFi Llama on May 5, the TVL in decentralized finance was more than 200.000 million dollars.
On the other hand, the data also indicates that the total value locked in DeFi has grown from almost zero to more than 200.000 billion in less than two years. A growth that has been exponential and that has shot since 2021.
DeFi already surpasses many banking entities
The a16z study places DeFi's TVL at last place in a top 31 banks worldwide.
However, the total value of DeFi is still very far from the top 3, where we find banking entities such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America or JPMorgan Chase, which is in first position, with a TVL of more than 3 trillion dollars.
The most popular DeFi protocols
For a long time, Ethereum Has Ruled Over DeFi Protocols and monopolizing most of the market. However, as new DeFi protocols have appeared, they have been gaining positions and challenging ETH for the throne.
The most popular protocols according to the a16z study would be Fantom, Terra, Polygon, Solana, Avalanche or BNB Chain.
As for the most popular use cases, decentralized lending protocols such as Maker DAO, Compound or AAVE stand out. Secondly, we also find decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Sushiswap or Pancakeswap.
The fall of UST and the regulators
The rise of DeFi TVL and abrupt drop in UST of Terra have powerfully attracted the attention of financial regulators around the world. According to regulators, these protocols manage increasing amounts of money and they do not have any regulation or review by higher bodies, so users do not have any type of protection against scams or losses.
In fact, the Terra crisis has caused serious losses to users and, at the same time, it has raised suspicions among the authorities. For example, South Korea intends to carry out Do Kwon brought to justice to explain to users what has happened to the protocol and the stable currency.
