Key Takeaways
After shrinking for several months in a row, the DeFi market finally bucked its downtrend in October. Data from DeFi Llama shows that the total value locked (TV) on all DeFi protocols has increased by around 20% in the past month, climbing to over $51.B as of November 15.
Tron-based platforms and services have been among the biggest beneficiaries of recent growth, pointing to the blockchain’s rising prominence in the DeFi space.
According to Binance’s most recent trend report, in October, Tron accounted for 19% of the overall DeFi market’s TVL, up from just 10% earlier in the year.
Home to a thriving ecosystem of decentralized exchanges and lending platforms, Tron is the second most popular blockchain for DeFi after Ethereum.
Significantly, DeFi on Tron has boomed without the support of Lido, Curve Finance, or Uniswap – three key players in the space that drive a significant amount of activity on other chains.
In place of Lido, platforms like UNIFI and Neopin have stepped up to meet the demand for liquid staking services on Tron, allowing users to stake TRX without sacrificing liquidity. Meanwhile, Tron’s closest equivalent to Curve is JustLend, a decentralized lending and borrowing platform that supports 19 digital assets.
Following several months of growth, the TVL on JustLend recently climbed to an all-time high of over $6B. If staking isn’t in the total, it has even overtaken AAVE as the DeFi lending protocol with the highest TVL.
In contrast, lending platforms that are tied to Ethereum and its L2s have struggled in 2023.
For example, Curve deposits have yet to recover from the effects of a major exploit in July. Having surpassed $24B at its peak, Curve’s TVL has hovered around $2B since the hack.
Compound Finance has witnessed a similar TVL decline, from over $12B in 2021, to just $2.24B today.
On top of the lending protocol’s growth, over $2B of USDT has been staked in exchange for JustLend’s Tron-native stablecoin stUSDT, a 24% increase in the past month. The related TRX-backed stablecoin JustStables (USDJ) has also seen rising inflows since August.