DeFi unicorn Uniswap regains liquidity and emerges as the largest DeFi protocol by market cap, while DeFi ecosystems nearly doubled in value in just 30 days, growing by over 70%.
The year 2020 was the year of the DeFi, decentralized finance protocols began to grow in value since the middle of this year and have not stopped growing since then. However, the exponential growth reflected in this sector of the crypto industry in the last month is simply impressive. The graphs of DeFiPulse, one of the largest data providers for DeFi, lays out the facts in plain sight.
Source: DeFiPulse.
In just 30 days, the total value locked in DeFi has grown from $14.300 billion on Dec. 18 to $24.890 billion at the time of writing — a 74% increase over the past month.
It seems that at present, the person responsible for this exponential growth is Uniswap, the DeFi unicorn that once again enters the ecosystem as the decentralized protocol with the highest capitalization within these markets. Uniswap, the decentralized exchange (DEX) most popular DeFi protocol, which was overshadowed by the decentralized lending protocol MakerDAO over the past few months, regained its liquidity again last week, amid a massive increase in gas prices Ethereum, which brought commission fees up to $9 USD per transaction.
On the other hand, in CoinGecko, another well-known data provider for the world of cryptocurrencies and DeFi, points out that the total value locked within decentralized ecosystems exceeds 34 million as of the current date.
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Interest in DeFi is consolidating
Everything seems to indicate that instead of dying, the interest in decentralized finance is consolidating and intensifying every day. The new values that this ecosystem reflects are a clear sign of the interest that exists in these ecosystems, and they can also mean that new investors are coming to them, making their capitalization, or total liquidity, grow in value. However, much of the new value that DeFi enjoys, which according to DeFi Pulse is touching $25.000 billion, is thanks to the growth of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
DappRadar, another major DeFi data provider, has tools designed to be much more accurate when providing information within these ecosystems. For example, DappRadar has a metric known as Adjusted Total Deposited Value (aTVL), which shows much more real and specific values of what is really happening within DeFi. At the time of this writing, DappRadar points out that the aTVL of DeFi is at a value of 11.200 billion dollars; this being the true value deposited within these ecosystems. The rest of the value, which the provider also shows at 25.000 billion, is due to the rise in the prices of many of the tokens that make up the decentralized ecosystem.
Source: DappRadar
Both platforms show that Uniswap is taking the top spot as the most liquid DeFi protocol, with a total value locked between $4.300 and $4.800 billion.
Uniswap, a DEX born to lead
The most popular decentralized DeFi exchange has regained its liquidity once again, marking a new all-time high for itself, breaking the $4.000 billion barrier. Uniswap had previously set two all-time records, when it became the first DeFi project to surpass the $2.000 and $3.000 TVL mark. However, despite now surpassing the $4.000 billion mark, MakerDAO beat it to this milestone, becoming the first to reach and surpass this value in DeFi ecosystems.
Uniswap began to recover its liquidity starting this January, and to date it has a TVL of $4.370 billion, surpassing MakerDAO by just a few dollars. Its founder, Hayden Adams, echoed this great feat on Twitter, highlighting that Uniswap's current growth is not driven by the liquidity incentives the exchange provides to reward users who deposit value within it, but by the users themselves who are generating millions of dollars in daily trading fees, adding liquidity to the DEX.
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