DeFi looks vast with $160B in TVL but capital concentrates in a handful of protocols
The DeFi market is stabilizing at $160.56 billion in TVL, but knowledge exhibits a liquidity break up between spot and derivatives, whereas collateral stays clustered in simply a few main venues. Meanwhile, spot, perpetuals, and stablecoin bases are increasing in parallel, suggesting that order circulation and collateral are recycled throughout fewer but extra environment friendly protocols.
The previous week noticed the market cap of stablecoins rise to $289.67 billion, up 1.32% week over week, with Tether holding a 58.9% share at round $170.6 billion. This secure base has enabled each spot and perpetual markets to broaden almost $20 billion every on the week, preserving execution break up nearly evenly: spot buying and selling volumes totaled $114.13 billion versus $124.66 billion in perps.
On a 24-hour foundation, the market is almost balanced with $19.43 billion in spot circulation and $18.83 billion in derivatives. This near-parity exhibits that merchants are participating with DeFi at a number of layers: speculative leverage by means of perps and settlement-driven flows by means of spot DEXs.
It additionally means that funding charges are extra intently tied to stablecoin issuance than to new exterior inflows, which can hold markets delicate to stablecoin coverage modifications.
| Metric | Current | Period | WoW / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Value Locked (TVL) | $160.56 billion | 24h | -0.46% |
| Stablecoins Market Cap | $289.672 billion | – | +1.32% 7d |
| USDT Dominance | 58.90% | – | Implied USDT ≈ $170.62 billion |
| DEX Spot Volume | $19.433 billion | 24h | $114.134 billion 7d (+21.05% WoW) |
| Perpetuals Volume | $18.832 billion | 24h | $124.658 billion 7d (+19.63% WoW) |
| Spot vs Perps Split | ≈ 51% / 49% | 24h | Spot barely forward on the day |
| RWA TVL | $15.397 billion | – | +6.65% 7d (~9.6% of DeFi TVL) |
| Upcoming Token Unlocks | $307.15 million | 14 days | – |
(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)
Liquidity will not be evenly distributed throughout DeFi. Aave, Lido, and EigenLayer alone account for greater than $100 billion of TVL, or 62% of the whole sector. Adding Binance-staked ETH and Ethena brings the share to over 80%.
This stage of focus exhibits how a lot of DeFi is tied to lending, liquid staking, and restaking quite than different on-chain purposes. Weekly inflows have been strongest into Aave (+$1.9B), Lido (+$1.6B), and Spark (+$1.8B), whereas Maker’s Sky system noticed a contraction of about $160 million.
| # | Protocol | TVL | 7d Change | 1m Change | Mcap/TVL | Revenue (30d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aave | $41.813b | +4.76% | +10.79% | 0.11 | $13.22m |
| 2 | Lido | $39.028b | +4.22% | -1.59% | 0.027 | $9.24m |
| 3 | EigenLayer | $19.308b | +2.49% | -6.18% | 0.026 | – |
| 4 | Binance staked ETH | $15.452b | +7.60% | +7.99% | – | $3.18m |
| 5 | Ethena | $13.909b | +6.20% | +21.36% | 0.35 | $2.42m |
| 6 | Pendle | $12.912b | +9.96% | +39.65% | 0.064 | $5.4m |
| 7 | ether.fi | $11.378b | +3.81% | -4.42% | 0.059 | $6.55m |
| 8 | Spark | $9.12b | +25.01% | +10.74% | 0.011 | $4.47m |
| 9 | Morpho | $8.535b | +7.84% | +30.60% | 0.075 | – |
| 10 | Babylon Protocol | $6.754b | +9.64% | +15.30% | 0.019 | – |
| 11 | Uniswap | $5.926b | +1.52% | -4.50% | 0.92 | – |
| 12 | Sky (Maker) | $5.926b | -2.64% | -11.91% | 0.28 | $19.15m |
| 13 | JustLend | $5.232b | +3.81% | +0.76% | 0.063 | $45,182 |
| 14 | Veda | $4.309b | -0.23% | -3.18% | – | – |
| 15 | Jito | $3.565b | +9.99% | +21.21% | 0.20 | $972,148 |
(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)
A focus like this will increase the systemic interlinkages: most of the collateral is both Ethereum or liquid staking tokens that rely upon ETH safety. This means liquidity shocks in ETH markets will propagate throughout a number of DeFi layers concurrently.
It additionally exhibits how restricted the innovation funnel has grow to be: capital continues to cycle into staking and lending primitives quite than novel use circumstances, making progress extra a end result of scale than diversification.
Spot markets are more and more polarized between established gamers and fast-growing new venues. Uniswap processed $23.47 billion in weekly trades, preserving a 20.6% share of all spot quantity.
PancakeSwap adopted with $15.48 billion, but its weekly circulation jumped 129%, making it the biggest gainer amongst top-tier DEXs. Solana-based Meteora superior even additional, rising 170% to $7.51 billion. Hyperliquid’s spot DEX posted $6.82 billion with a 178% enhance, whereas Orca confirmed the identical fee of progress, signaling robust rotation of flows into rising swimming pools.
At the identical time, Raydium’s weekly turnover collapsed by 48% to $4.6 billion. This tells us Solana routing is being redistributed towards new venues reminiscent of Meteora. It additionally exhibits us that merchants aren’t loyal to a single AMM and have a tendency to rapidly migrate to venues with higher incentives or extra environment friendly liquidity routing.
The end result is a DeFi market in which smaller but faster-moving protocols can quickly seize very giant flows but should keep fixed innovation or incentives to maintain that share.
| # | DEX | TVL | Spot Volume (24h) | Spot Volume (7d) | 7d Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uniswap | $5.926b | $4.29b | $23.468b | +16.44% |
| 2 | PancakeSwap | $2.349b | $2.458b | $15.48b | +129% |
| 3 | Meteora | $885.51m | $1.295b | $7.506b | +170% |
| 4 | Hyperliquid (Spot) | $692.6m | $770.68m | $6.823b | +178% |
| 5 | HumidiFi | – | $1.349b | $5.648b | +33.26% |
| 6 | Fluid | $1.763b | $1.117b | $5.2b | +58.19% |
| 7 | Pump | $320.01m | $770.16m | $4.95b | +41.86% |
| 8 | Aerodrome | $691.18m | $865.68m | $4.858b | +73.56% |
| 9 | Raydium | $2.563b | $697.46m | $4.602b | -48.40% |
| 10 | Orca | $443.25m | $655.03m | $4.098b | +178% |
(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)
Perpetual markets stay almost as giant as spot exercise. With $124.66 billion in seven-day quantity, perps added greater than $20 billion in comparison with the week earlier than. The weekly whole was nonetheless about $10 billion larger than spot volumes. An in depth 24-hour break up between spot and perps exhibits that threat is evenly shared between taker execution and derivatives positioning.
Hyperliquid and Pump.fun stand out from different protocols. Both noticed important progress over the previous yr, but have been champions in monetizing exercise. Pump generated $57.9 million in income over 30 days from solely $320 million of TVL, implying payment depth above 18% monthly. Hyperliquid’s $96.3 million in income in opposition to $692 million TVL implies about a 14% month-to-month payment yield.
These ratios dwarf these of lending markets reminiscent of Aave, which earned simply $13.2 million on $41.8 billion of TVL, a payment depth of solely 0.03%. This excessive divergence exhibits how derivatives venues successfully “print” income out of volatility, whereas lending and staking stay utility layers with little direct payment seize. If these economics persist, token valuations for buying and selling protocols will keep elevated relative to collateral-heavy protocols.
| Protocol | Revenue (30d) | TVL | Revenue / TVL (30d) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pump | $57.88m | $320.01m | 18.09% |
| Hyperliquid | $96.25m | $692.60m | 13.90% |
| Aerodrome | $14.96m | $691.18m | 2.16% |
| Jupiter | $25.57m | $3.478b | 0.74% |
| Aave | $13.22m | $41.813b | 0.03% |
| Lido | $9.24m | $39.028b | 0.02% |
(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)
With almost $290 billion in circulation, stablecoins present the ballast for either side of the market. USDT alone at over $170 billion serves because the dominant settlement layer for centralized and decentralized venues.
Revenue focus knowledge exhibits the outsized position of stablecoin issuers: Tether and Circle collectively generated $863 million in income over the previous 30 days, or 72% of all protocol-level revenue among the many leaders tracked. Adding Hyperliquid and Pump pushes that to 85%.
| Issuer | Revenue (30d) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tether | $642.31m | Largest share of issuer income |
| Circle | $220.65m | Second-largest amongst issuers |
(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)
This focus signifies that stablecoin issuers have successfully grow to be the central banks of DeFi, setting the tempo for liquidity growth by means of their issuance. It additionally implies that regulatory or market disruptions affecting USDT or USDC may ripple immediately into DeFi exercise, throttling each spot and by-product volumes.
The reality that almost all DEX and perp exercise is quoted in these stablecoins reinforces their position because the structural spine of decentralized buying and selling, with little diversification into different settlement models apart from ETH.
The knowledge exhibits us that the DeFi market is formed by three distinct forces: the focus of collateral in lending and staking, the redistribution of spot quantity in the direction of DEXs on Solana and Base, and the fee-intensive exercise of derivatives and stablecoin issuers.
Spot and perps are balanced in greenback phrases, but the financial gravity has moved to a small group of protocols that seize the overwhelming majority of capital and income. Liquidity is considerable but extremely clustered; execution high quality is dependent upon the selection of the buying and selling venue, whereas systemic dependence on stablecoin issuers and leverage is larger than ever.
We now have a market the place participation looks broad on the floor, with tons of of protocols and dozens of giant chains. However, efficient management of each customers and capital rests with fewer than 20 names. This creates effectivity but will increase systemic threat.
The steadiness between innovation, incentives, and capital security will resolve whether or not DeFi continues to develop and grow to be extra resilient or stays hostage to the identical few gamers that dominate it at the moment.
The put up DeFi looks vast with $160B in TVL but capital concentrates in a handful of protocols appeared first on CryptoSlate.
