On the other hand, DeFi projects have seen countless hacks and one of the most catastrophic meltdowns in tech/internet history with Terra. Together with the macro conditions, these factors have caused the DeFi market to drop significantly, even more than other blockchain sectors, in the past year.
On the other hand, you can’t have GameFi without DeFi, and NFT markets are increasingly integrating DeFi elements like staking and tokenization.
In the second half of the year, NFTs and GameFi outperformed DeFi in both public and investor interest. However, DeFi is far from dead. Although the vast majority of DeFi projects are no longer active (as this list will show), many protocols and classes have performed quite well, indicating – weathering the storm so far – that they are likely to survive the bear market and thrive in the future.
In the spirit of DYOR, we’ve rounded up the most important stats on DeFi from 2022, so you can look into the industry. By looking at the past, you can make smarter investments and analyzes in the future.
9 stats on the DeFi market
- Total TVL in DeFi fell from $267 billion at the beginning of January to $53 billion by the end of the year.
The DeFi crypto sector has had a tough year, one that started with a Fed rate hike, and was exacerbated by the Terra crash and continued hacks, crashes, and macro conditions.
Reference: DeFi TVL
- The total number of DeFi protocols rose from 1,080 in January to a peak of 1,596 in September, before almost stagnating.
Note that not all of these protocols are active. As shown in stat 9, there are less than 100 currently active.
Reference: Monthly total number of DeFi protocols
- The biggest crash in DeFi history occurred from May 4th to May 14th with the Terra crash
Terra Network was a tier one blockchain known for its high throughput and stable computational work, UST.
Reference: Terra dashboard
- DEXs remained the largest type of DeFi protocol with 34% of total TVL, while lending protocols increased from 18% to 20%.
This is not surprising, given that DEXs play an important role in the DeFi infrastructure. Going forward, lending protocols will have a more difficult time given the consequences of over-leveraging in 2022.
Reference: Distribution of TVL in different categories (2021) And Distribution of TVL in different categories (Click to explore more)
- The market capitalization of DeFi tokens peaked on April 3 at $243 billion, down 4% from its ATH ($253 billion) from a year earlier on December 3. 26
This statistic contains the market capitalization of DeFi tokens as the sum of the tokens issued by DeFi protocols. It does not include L1 and L2 tokens that are commonly used in DeFi, such as Ethereum and Solana.
Reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs. BTC Market Cap
- As of December. On the 31st, the market cap of DeFi tokens was $40.52 billion
By comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization on this date was $318.41 billion
Reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs. BTC Market Cap
- From the end of November to the beginning of December, BTC had its 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, where 1 indicates that both sets of prices always move in the same direction and -1 that they never move in the same direction.
Reference: 2022: Bitcoin and S&P 500 price correlation analysis
- The Fear and Greed Index reached a yearly low on June 6 at 6 (extreme fear).
In comparison, it reached the 8-10 range in the immediate aftermath of Terra Luna’s collapse and stayed above 10 after the FTX crash.
Reference: 2022 Token price against F&G
- The number of active DeFi projects decreased by 33% year-on-year
Active project is determined by Footprint Analytics Average daily active users in the last 5 days is greater than 100.
Reference: Active projects by series
6 Stats about DeFi Chains
- All of the top 10 DeFi TVL chains ended the year with fewer active DeFi protocols than they did at the start.
Active projects make up a small portion of the total protocols, with most of them failing to get any TVL.
Reference: Active projects by series
- BNB has consistently had the most active projects over the year, ranging from 24 to 49, and the most active users, from 150k to 550k.
With the benefit of owning the world’s largest CEX, Binance, and BNB Smart Chain, Binance can offer competitive incentives and grants to the ecosystem.
Reference: Active projects by series
- As of the end of the year, Polygon had the second largest number of active protocols, 12, while Ethereum had 8.
Polygon is an EVM L2 solution with strong performance in 2022 across many sectors of the blockchain industry, especially DeFi and gaming.
Reference: Active projects by series
- Ethereum has the second largest number of total protocols, at 129
The Ethereum Network has made DeFi possible and has been the first mover in the industry. However, congestion, and high gas fees have very limited prospects for developers.
Reference: Active projects by series
- At its peak on April 6, Terra TVL had $103.9 billion
This metric made it the second largest on the chain, overtaking BNB in December. Note that through TVL, Ethereum had a high
Reference: TVL by Chain (excluding Ethereum)
- Ethereum had the highest TVL over the year, rising from $106.7 billion to $972.8 billion, then falling again to $171.2 billion.
Reference: TVL series
- Excluding Terra, Solana had the biggest percentage drop in TVL from ATH, dropping 96% from $16 billion to $600 million.
Solana had several very promising GameFi and DeFi projects at the beginning of the year and seemed to be a contender to overtake Ethereum. However, these failed to be sustainable.
Reference: TVL series
5 stats about DeFi protocols
- UNI had the highest market cap of all DeFi protocol tokens
UNI is the governance token for Uniswap, the world’s largest and most popular DEX. It is based on Ethereum.
Reference: Top 5 market tokens for protocol tokens
- The only DeFi token to increase a percentage last year was Lido’s IDO, going from $247 million to $896 million.
Lido allows users to improve returns on their stacked assets by tokenizing their deposits.
Reference: Top 5 market tokens for protocol tokens
- DEX protocols make up 26% of all DeFi TVL
Reference: DEX TVL ratio
- Curve is the largest protocol by TVL as of December. 31 at $3.6 billion
Curve is one of the original DeFi protocols designed to generate a return on stablecoins.
Reference: DEX TVL ratio
- USDT, also known as Tether, remained the largest stablecoin by market capitalization, reaching $66.2 billion on December 3. 31.
Tether is an asset-backed stablecoin that has seen its share of controversy in 2022. However, despite USDC reaching $10 billion in TVL in the summer, USDT has expanded its lead since then.
Reference: Top 5 Stablecoins by Market Cap
4 Stats about DeFi Investment
- The largest funding round of the year was a $400 million Lithosphere Network seed round in May led by Gem Capital.
According to its website, Lithosphere “is a next-generation network of cross-chain decentralized applications powered by AI and deep learning.”
Reference: DeFi Fundraising stats
- The massive lithosphere tour helped make January the biggest month for investment, at $643 million
Reference: DeFi Fundraising stats
- January saw the most rounds of 2022, with 69
Reference: DeFi investment amount in 2022
- DeFi was the second most popular type of project by funding round in both 2021 and 2022, but while DeFi captured 23% of the total round in 2021, it captured 18% in 2022.
Reference: Distribution of investment financing in 2021 and 2022 The fingerprint analytics community contributed to this article by Daniel, January 2023. Data source: DeFi industry stats from 2022
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