25 important stats about the DeFi industry from 2022

On the one hand, DeFi projects have had countless hacks and one of the most disastrous collapses in tech/internet history with Terra. Combined with the macro environment, these factors caused the DeFi market to decline more significantly than other blockchain sectors last year.

On the other hand, you can’t have GameFi without DeFi, and NFT marketplaces are increasingly integrating DeFi elements such as staking and tokenization.

In the second half of this year, NFTs and GameFi overtook DeFi in public and investor interest. But DeFi is by no means dead. While the majority of DeFi projects have ceased activity (as this list shows), several protocols and categories have shown good performance, weathering the storm so far, surviving the bear market and looking to the future. indicates that it is likely to thrive in

In the spirit of DYOR, we’ve collected the most important DeFi stats for 2022 and beyond so you can explore the industry. Looking back over the year can help you make smarter investments and analyzes going forward.

9 Stats About the DeFi Market

• Total DeFi TVL fell from $267 billion in early January to $53 billion by the end of the year.

The crypto DeFi sector had a tough year. That recession started with the Fed raising rates and was exacerbated by the Terra collapse and continued hacking, collapse and macro conditions.

reference: DeFi TVL

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• The total number of DeFi protocols increased from 1,080 in January to a peak of 1,596 in September before remaining largely stagnant.

Note that not all of these protocols are active. There are currently less than 100 active as seen in stat 9.

reference: Monthly total number of DeFi protocols

• The biggest collapse in DeFi history was the Terra collapse that took place from May 4th to May 14th.

The Terra network was a Layer 1 blockchain known for its high yield and algorithmic stablecoin UST.

reference: Terra Dashboard

• DEXs continue to be the largest type of DeFi protocol, accounting for 34% of total TVL, while lending protocols increased from 18% to 20%.

This is not surprising given the important role DEX plays in DeFi infrastructure. Looking ahead, lending protocols will have a harder time given the consequences of over-leveraging in 2022.

reference: TVL Distribution of Different Categories (2021) When TVL distribution in different categories (click to see details)

• DeFi token market cap peaked at $243 billion on April 3, down 4% from the previous year’s ATH ($253 billion) on December 26.

This statistic has the market capitalization of DeFi tokens as the sum of tokens issued by the DeFi protocol. It does not include L1 and L2 tokens commonly used in DeFi, such as Ethereum and Solana.

reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs BTC Market Cap

• As of December 31st, DeFi token market cap was $40.52 billion

By comparison, the market cap of BTC on this day was $31.841 billion.

reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs BTC Market Cap

• At the end of November and early December, BTC had the largest price correlation from the S&P 500 in recent history, reaching -0.83.

The stock market correlation index is measured on a scale of 1 to -1. 1 indicates that the two price sets are always moving in the same direction, -1 indicates they are not moving in the same direction.

reference: 2022: BTC and S&P 500 Price Correlation Analysis

• The Fear & Greed Index hit an annual low of 6 on June 6 (Extreme Fear)

In comparison, it reached the 8-10 range immediately after Terra Luna’s collapse, and remained above 10 after FTX’s collapse.

reference: 2022 Token Price VS F&G

• Number of active DeFi projects down 33% year-over-year

An active project is defined by having more than 100 average daily active users in Footprint Analytics for the last 5 days.

reference: Active Projects by Chain

Six stats on the DeFi chain

• All 10 of the largest DeFi TVL chains have fewer DeFi protocols active than they did when they started.

Ongoing projects are a small part of the overall protocol, most of which do not have a TVL.

reference: Active Projects by Chain

• BNB consistently had the most active projects throughout the year, fluctuating between 24 and 49, with 150K to 550K of most active users.

The advantage of having both the world’s largest CEX, Binance and BNB smart chains allows Binance to offer competitive ecosystem incentives and subsidies.

reference: Active Projects by Chain

• At the end of the year, Polygon had the second highest number of active protocols, with 12, and Ethereum with 8.

Polygon is an EVM L2 solution with strong performance in 2022 in several sectors of the blockchain industry, especially DeFi and gaming.

reference: Active Projects by Chain

• Ethereum has the second highest number of total protocols with 129.

The Ethereum network enabled DeFi and was an industry first. But it’s congestion and high gas prices severely limit the possibilities for developers.

reference: Active Projects by Chain

• At its peak on April 6, Terra’s TVL was $103.9 billion

This metric made it the second largest chain, surpassing BNB in December. Note that Ethereum was consistently the best, according to TVL

reference: TVL by Chain (excluding Ethereum)

• Ethereum had the highest TVL of the year, rising from $106.7 billion to $972.8 billion before falling to $171.2 billion.

reference: TVL by Chain

• Excluding Terra, Solana showed a significant reduction in TVL from ATH, sliding 96% from $16 billion to $600 million.

Solana had some very promising GameFi and DeFi projects earlier this year and looked like it could overtake Ethereum. However, these were not sustainable.

reference: TVL by Chain

5 Stats About DeFi Protocols

• UNI had the highest market cap among all DeFi protocol tokens

UNI is the governance token of Uniswap, the world’s largest and most popular DEX. It is based on Ethereum.

reference: Top 5 Protocol Token Market Cap

• Lido’s IDO was the only DeFi protocol token to grow year-over-year, from $247M to $896M

Lido allows users to optimize the return on their wagered assets by tokenizing their deposits.

reference: Top 5 Protocol Token Market Cap

• DEX protocols account for 26% of all DeFi TVLs

reference: Percentage of DEX TVL

• Curve is the largest protocol by TVL as of December 31st at $3.6B.

Curve is one of the original DeFi protocols built to generate yield on stablecoins.

reference: Percentage of DEX TVL

• USDT, also known as Tether, continues to be the largest stablecoin by market cap, hitting $66.2 billion on December 31st.

Tether is the controversial asset-backed stablecoin of 2022. But even though USDC hit $10 billion on his TVL in the summer, USDT has since extended its lead.

reference: Top 5 stablecoins by market cap

4 Stats About DeFi Investing

• The largest funding round of the year was the $400 million Lithosphere Network seed round led by Gem Capital in May.

According to its website, Lithosphere is “a next-generation network for cross-chain decentralized applications powered by AI and deep learning.”

reference: DeFi funding stats

• Huge Lithosphere round makes January the biggest month with $643 million in investments

reference: DeFi funding stats

• In 2022, January had the most, with 69.

reference: DeFi investment volume in 2022

• DeFi was the second most popular type of project in both 2021 and 2022 funding rounds, with DeFi accounting for 23% of all rounds in 2021, up from 18% in 2022. accounted for

reference: Breakdown of investment funds in 2021 and 2022 Contributors to this work are footprint analysis Community by Daniel, January 2023. Data source: Statistics on the DeFi industry from 2022

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