In brief
- More than $8 billion in cryptocurrency is now locked in DeFi smart contracts.
- That number has doubled since the end of July, says DeFi Pulse.
- Aave has recently taken the lead over Maker thanks to explosive growth.
If the constant headlines and social media chatter didn’t convince you, now we have hard updated numbers showing that decentralized finance (DeFi) continued to soar across the month of August.
According to data analytics site DeFi Pulse, the amount of cryptocurrency locked in DeFi app smart contracts passed $8 billion this week, currently sitting at $8.41 billion as of this writing.
Over the course of August, the amount of crypto locked within those smart contracts has doubled the amount seen on July 31, which was $4.19 billion according to DeFi Pulse.
Most of that growth came in the early half of the month, as the total hit $7 billion on August 16 and saw a more gradual climb up to $8 billion, which happened this week on August 26.
Maker had been the leading protocol for some time, with a sizable lead over rivals as of earlier this month. However, it now sits at #2 beneath a new champion: Aave.
Aave is currently on top with $1.55 billion in cryptocurrency locked within its smart contracts—and that amount has nearly tripled in just over two weeks. It had just $529.6 million locked in smart contracts as of August 13, but shot up nearly $428 million the following day and has continued to climb since.
Now Aave commands more than 18% of the total crypto locked in DeFi contracts today. As reported earlier this week, the price of Aave’s LEND token has soared more than 20,000% over the last year due to Ethereum’s DeFi explosion.
Maker has seen much steadier growth in August, growing from $1.28 billion locked in smart contracts on August 1 to $1.43 billion as of yesterday. Curve Finance is not far behind at $1.26 billion as of yesterday, with Balancer the only other protocol above the billion mark at $1.07 billion.
DeFi’s market cap has similarly exploded of late, currently sitting at $15.5 billion according to CoinGecko. That figure sat at just $11 billion as recently as August 9.