TokenInsight DeFi Industry Report 2021 Q3

The DeFi market in 2021 Q3 seemed like a new page in the cryptocurrency’s history. The total market locked value (TVL) finally exceed $200b, which is 24% higher than Q2, 147% higher than Q1, and it is 464% higher than Q3 2020! 

Axie Infinity, Opensea & NFTs

After the huge crash in May this year, the DeFi market experienced a silent June and July. TVL fluctuated around $100b, while the total protocol revenues remained low (less than $20m). However, the bull came starting with the hotspot of Axie Infinity and the summer of NFTs. Axie Infinity and Opensea’s revenue boosted to $500m+ in Q3. 

DeFi 2.0

Except for the mature of the basic DeFi sectors led by Uniswap (37% share), Aave, Curve, and MakerDAO, we could see the market has a lot of preferences on products that provide both high-yield and detailed secondary services. For example, Lido, the PoS staking liquidity solution, attracted billion dollars assets due to the demands of Ethereum staking booming, ranking its TVL to the top 10 DeFi protocols. Another example is Convex, a Curve yield optimization solution, providing better yields with relatively lower capital occupation, also got a boosting TVL to nearly $8b. We also covered Tokemak, Olympus Pro, and Alchemix in our discussions. 

Derivatives DEXs

Derivatives also have trends to boom. The top 2 perpetual DEXs, Perpetual, and dYdX, performed impressively in Q3. Perpetual protocol’s token price increased by 90%, and its market cap increased incredibly by 500%. dYdX’s trading volume surpassed FTX’s derivatives volume on September 28. 

Solana

Solana also experienced “a great summer” in Q3. Leading by $SOL, the average Solana protocol market cap increased 425% in Q3. Among them, the stablecoin protocol Saber even reached 122 times increase. 

Layer-2 & multi-chains 

Another remarkable trend is the migration towards layer-2 solutions. Arbitrum’s mainnet launch took a 20% market share from Polygon. Other smart contracts platforms’ tokens such us Terra, Avalanche, Fantom, and Celo, their market cap has increased by more than 3 times, while with some big signs of progress and star projects to expect. 

We also discussed a lot about the cross-chain market, structured yield projects , interest rates projects, options, and even DeFi 2.0. TokenInsight Research has always been the pioneer exploring in the deep DeFi market. We are very grateful and pleased to continue this journey with our supporters and “hodlers”. We also would like to find who are strong believers in crypto, who love to ape, who are enthusiastic enough to explore the new world rules every day. If this is you, we are on the same path. Welcome to reach out, we are excited to invite you to BUIDL together. WAGMI!

Click to get the completed PDF report.