• The DeFi market has made a swift recovery, going as far as breaking its ATH after surpassing $157B.
• In part, this is owed to the rise of competition with several protocols recording significant growth.

Over the last year, decentralized finance (DeFi) has been on a roll. DeFi tokens with strong financial utilities have gained tremendous market share. As the decentralized finance (DeFi) market continues to expand, the total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi space has touched a record high of $157 billion.

Besides, DeFi projects focused on interoperability, offering cross-chain bridges and liquidity mining pools have registered a major influx of funds. Over the last month, DeFi tokens have registered a stellar bull run in the market. All of the top ten DeFi tokens have gained between 25-50 percent over the last 30 days.

The total value locked basically represents the assets currently staked on a specific DeFi protocol. The higher the staking more is the legitimacy of the platform. During the early market bull run of 2021, the DeFi TVL crossed $150 billion.

However, along with the broader crypto market correction, the DeFi market also corrected significantly. But the DeFi space has picked up entirely its lost ground while a majority of coins including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum ETH) are still trading at over 20 percent discounts from their all-time highs.

Ethereum still holds a lion’s share when it comes to hosting DeFi applications as well as the TVL. However, there are a few emerging DeFi protocols in the market eating into the market share of Ethereum (ETH). Over the last three months, several such DeFi protocols have come into existence.

These platform have benefitted amid the rising Ethereum transaction costs while offering faster processing time through cross-chain bridges.

The emerging DeFi Platforms

DeFi platforms like Avalanche (AVAX) and Binance Smart Chain have started gaining strong visibility and traction in the market. Recently, BENQI, the first DeFi lending platform on Avalanche, announced crossing over $1 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL).

Just launched a week back, BENQI is a non-custodial liquidity market protocol offering borrowing, lending, and interest-earning facilities via digital assets. Important initiatives like Avalanche Rush and Avalanche Bridge have contributed towards ushering BENQI’s liquidity. BENQI Co-Founder, JD Gagnon siad:

The Avalanche Rush initiative coupled with the new Avalanche Bridge has proved to be a major catalyst for the rush of liquidity to not only BENQI but the rest of the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem.

We’re currently optimizing the protocol, and have plans to collaborate with projects going cross-chain to Avalanche as part of the Avalanche Rush initiative.

Another popular DeFi protocol on the rise is Dinoswap. Just last month, Dinoswap surpassed the milestone of crossing $500 million in Total Value Locked (TVL). Dinoswap aims to become the central hub for multi-chain liquidity.

Dinoswap is pushing for rapid scaling on the Polygon blockchain network. It is positioning itself as a long-term infrastructure platform benefitting projects, DEXs, blockchain ecosystems, and yield farmers.