Maker token surges 30% following billion-dollar growth in DeFi

Maker (MKR) is not yet a top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap, but it’s easily today’s biggest performer. Clocking in at number 23 in the rankings, the price of Maker today surged by more than 30%.

The coin was briefly trading for as much as $716 this morning, which tops its previously yearly high of $714 in February. Prior, the last time MKR was this hot was in July 2019.

As recently as mid-March, Maker was trading for as little as $250 per coin. In late May, the token experienced a similarly massive surge and nearly doubled in price—a sign of the significant growth in decentralized finance (DeFi) and its associated tokens in the last two months.

Maker is one of two tokens—the other being the DAI stablecoin—established by the DeFi project MakerDAO. MKR was created to support the stability of DAI, which is pegged to the US dollar. The nascent DeFi industry has been on a tear as of late, which is reflected in the current  value of DeFi tokens.

Over the weekend, the total market cap for tokens associated with DeFi projects surpassed the $2 billion mark for the first time. Maker, at number one in the DeFiMarketCap rankings, makes up more than a quarter of that total value. The 0x protocol with $322 million and Synthetix at $172 million come next at a distant second and third.

Just two months ago, the total market cap for DeFi stood at just over $1 billion, according to data from DeFiMarketCap.