Key insights into leading projects in various fields of DeFi: Overall oligopoly structure

Author:Cheeezzyyy

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Since the launch of "DeFi Summer" in 2021, DeFi has made great progress. Today, DeFi has established multiple mature fields, with growth and activity in various fields achieving self-sustaining.

Even so, its development is still in its early stages, as the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is still about $3.3 trillion, while the market capitalization of TradFi is $133 trillion.

The core of DeFi is to provide more innovative and efficient systems that solve the problem of TradFi inefficiency through proven PMF (market fit point). DeFi is also composed of several key areas that usually follow an oligopoly structure.

In the fourth quarter of 2024, DEX platform Raydium (an automated market maker based on Solana) accounted for about 61% of the market share, surpassing Uniswap to become an industry leader. It is worth mentioning that Raydium's TVL is only about 39% of that of Uniswap.

Although Raydium's rise may be caused by Memecoin Season in the Solana ecosystem, its LT (Note: User Lifecycle, measuring user activity) persistence is still uncertain.

The winners in the perp DEX field are outstanding. Hyperliquid's dominance has been further consolidated since the third quarter of 2024, with market share increasing from 24% to 73% (3 times).

The overall volume of perp DEX has been recovering since the fourth quarter of 2024, with daily trading volume currently being around $8 billion, compared with just $4 billion at the time.

Hyperliquid continues to challenge CEX's position as a price discovery platform.

Aave’s dominance in the lending sector has increased since 2024:

• Deposit: 42.1% to 65.78%
• Borrowing: 31% to 61%

Even if Aave doesn’t have the most attractive yield, it is still the top choice in the lending space with its long-standing reputation and user trust in the agreement.

In the revenue field, the leader Pendle is leading the development with a market share of over 50%. Its unique value proposition lies in the preferred promoter of discovering industry value. Despite the overall DeFi market slowdown and market sentiment is sluggish, Pendle still holds the TVL record.

As far as TVL is concerned, liquidity staking (LST) is the largest area in DeFi, with approximately $35 billion.

Lido Finance is an undisputed leader with a market share of about 70%, nearly monopolizing the LST sector, and its TVL ($24.8 billion) is 5.17 times the price of its rival Binance bETH ($4.8 billion).

This dominance is not driven by the staking yield, but by the asset value of stETH:

• Best asset utilization: The most integrated assets in DeFi
• The most trustworthy service: the preferred institutional-level staking solution for funds and entities

Trust and trust are key to adoption.

As for liquidity re-pled, the market trend is roughly the same. It is worth noting that ether.fi's market share rose from 35.3% to 63%. Because even though ether.fi's stake in S1 and S2 declined, its TVL grew by about 770% in 2024.

This growth is driven by:

• First-mover advantage in the ecosystem
• Extensive DeFi integration
• Trust of product suite

Lombard's performance in the BTC-Fi sector closely reflects the trend in the LST/LRT sector, with market share steadily rising to 49.5%.

As Babylon matures, demand for BTC, the primary security asset, will grow exponentially and bring about $2 trillion in market opportunities.

Because LBTC is the most integrated, most widely used and security-focused LRT in DeFi, Lombard is the primary asset that gains institutional trust and widespread adoption like stETH. Lombard will dominate the industry.

In short, it is obvious that each DeFi field has found its own PMF and formed an overall ecological complement to each other. This is the rise of a new original set that subverts CeFi.

As DeFi enters the next expansion phase, we will see more new verticals introducing untapped markets, even integrating into CeFi:

• Ethena Labs: Plans to integrate TradFi payments
• Mantle: Mantle Index Fund and Mantle Banking integrate cryptocurrencies with TradFi

As more and more institutions become interested in DeFi, such as BlackRock's participation in DeFi, WLFI's DeFi portfolio and spot ETF through BUIDL, we are optimistic about the future development of DeFi.