The total amount of capital locked in decentralized finances (Defi) The protocols reached $ 170 billion on Thursday, a historical figure as all losses of the collapse of the Terra/Luna ecosystem of 2022 and the subsequent bearish market have now been erased.
Although Ethereum still has the participation of the capital of the lion in 59%, the newcomers, including the base of the layer 2 backed by Coinbase, the Hyperliquid layer 1, the Hyperliquid block chain 1, have begun to escape the dominance of Ethereum, collectively accumulating more than $ 10 billion of total value blocked by total value. (TVL)representing about 6%.
Investor trends have changed in this recent cycle; Ether’s institutional adoption has led to traditional liquid rethinking products such as Lido in institutional rethinking products such as Figment, while there has also been a growth in the Solana and BNB chain due to a seismic increase in the activity of memecoras.
Solana is now the second largest block chain in terms of defi with $ 14.4 billion on TVL with a BNB chain behind the $ 8.2 billion.
A matured sector
The previous bullish market between January 2021 and April 2022 saw rapid growth throughout the defi ecosystem, with TVL jumping from $ 16 billion to $ 202 billion. This cycle has been measured more with a slow but constant gain of $ 42 billion in October 2022 to $ 170 billion in September 2025.
The ascent suggests that cryptographic investors could be learning from their errors of 2022 and have created a more mature echoesytem to lend, borrow and generate performance.
The implosion of Terra saw that TVL worth $ 100 billion was cleaned almost during the night, since investors, including cryptocurrency coverage funds in bankruptcy, three capital arrows, adopted an Gung Ho approach in an algorithmic stable that finally failed, which caused infection and bad debt in the entire industry.
Terra was the cryptographic form of a classic “dividend trap”, a product that offered yields that were too good to be true, but finally turned out to be unsustainable.
Now, the yields have retreated with the Aave loan protocol that offers a 5.2% yield in stables while the ether protocol is repeated. FI offers 11.1%, much less than 20% of Terra offered its stable.
What follows for Defi?
With the sector he defi now back where he was before Terra’s debacle, although with more sustainable yields, critics will ask how the market can continue to grow until the 2021 record in terms of TVL is overthrow.
The answer to that is nuanced. While it is true that institutional adoption and tickets for assets such as Ether and Solana will continue to drive a bullish narrative, the industry continues to fight with unbridled hacks, scams and carpet pulls connected to memecoins.
Cryptographic investors lost $ 2.5 billion due to hacks and scams in the first half of 2025 and for the industry to really become a viable alternative to traditional finances, investors must be protected.
Unlike traditional finance, where deposits are often insured and protected, the very essence of cryptocurrencies means that it is alone; If you lose the keys, they pile or pirate, there is no help to call.
The next defi iteration, either in this cycle or the following, must focus on the safety and prevention of hack, because the industry remains an important implosion of another cryptographic winter.
