Nearly $79 billion in assets value is currently locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to DeFi Llama. The TVL value is roughly twice the market cap of the third-largest crypto to date – Binance Coin (BNB) and is on-par with Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat.
Source: DeFi Llama
Looking at the figures, most of the TVL growth over the past seven days is driven by only a few platforms, while Binance Smart Chain dApps continue to lead the DeFi growth rank. PancakeSwap, for example, increased its TVL by 29%, which is an equivalent of $1.3 billion. Ellipsis Finance became one of the hottest DeFi projects, adding $1.9 billion to the TVL figures in less than a week.
A few Ethereum-based dApps also posted interesting TVL figures. Instadapp doubled its TVL and added $1.05 billion, 13th-ranked Yearn Finance also managed to double its TVL with an estimated increase of $850 million, and 18th-ranked Vesper Finance increased its TVL by 84% to surpass $1.5 billion just six weeks after its launch.
However, despite that the combined TVL of DeFi protocols is up around 10% weekly, data from crypto analytics provider Messari shows that the average performance of the DeFi sector has lost roughly 1% weekly.
Meanwhile, Binance Smart Chain-powered PancakeSwap has surpassed Uniswap, as PancakeSwap’s TVL reached $6.04 billion in BNB, according to DeFi Llama. The recent upwards momentum allowed PancakeSwap to surpass SushiSwap as well as Sushi’s TVL is just a little over $4.4 billion.
PancakeSwap is also leading in terms of daily volumes, as the decentralized exchange recorded $612 million, while Uniswap has a daily volume of $553 million. SushiSwap remains third with just $154 million, according to DappRadar.
PancakeSwap’s TVL increase comes amid gas fees trying to normalize from the peak levels in February, but they are still high for the average user. The average transaction price on Ethereum’s blockchain remains around $13.45.
Data from Etherscan, however, suggest prices per more complex operations like token swaps or sophisticated smart contract deployment to cost around $30 per swap. This is why decentralized exchanges which are running on Binance Smart Chain are continuously gaining traction.