Ethereum’s share of Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi has been compressed from 63.5% at the beginning of 2025 to approximately 54% as of May 7, hovering near its lowest level since May 2025.
DefiLlama estimates Ethereum’s current TVL at $45.4 billion, with each chain absorbing share responsible for different functions, including decentralized exchange (DEX) flows, stablecoin payments, BTC collateral, consumer onboarding, and perpetual trading.
Solana holds 6.66% of DeFi TVL, 6.60% of BNB Chain, 6.35% of Bitcoin, 6.17% of Tron, 5.44% of Base, and 1.81% of Hyper Liquid. This clustering defines DeFi’s transition from a single hub centered around Ethereum to a network of specialized rails.
Which chains captured the market
BSC made its mark with its Binance-linked distribution. CoinGecko reported that in the second quarter of 2025, PancakeSwap’s trading volume increased 539.2% QoQ to $392.6 billion, accounting for 45% of the top 10 DEX trading volume as Binance Alpha routed trades directly through PancakeSwap.
DefiLlama currently shows a BSC of $5.55 billion in TVL and $739.6 million in 24-hour DEX volume. Binance deepens its integration through Alpha Earn, allowing users to provide liquidity to PancakeSwap V3 directly from their Binance Wallet, and Alpha 2.0 embeds DEX trading within the Binance Exchange interface.
Binance controls the frontend, PancakeSwap executes trades, and BSC collects trade volumes.
Tron operates on a different axis. DefiLlama shows that the stablecoin on Tron is $89.6 billion, with USDT accounting for 97.86% of that figure, but the 24-hour DEX trading volume is only $55.5 million.
TRON’s $5.19 billion DeFi TVL understates its role as the chain with the largest stablecoin flow in crypto, serving as a dollar payment rail with thin app diversity and massive throughput.
Bitcoin’s DeFi TVL reached $5.34 billion, with a 6.35% advantage and a 13.4% increase in 30 days, despite 24-hour DEX volume of only $338,516. This difference defines the theory of BTCFi as capital moving into Bitcoin to generate yield and be collateralized.
Bitcoin’s DeFi role is emerging as a productivity layer where capital earns returns through collateral and lending protocols.
Base is the most important part of the competitive map as it operates within the Ethereum stack while eroding Ethereum L1’s headline share. Coinbase built Base as Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) on top of the OP stack. The distribution advantage is that the Base App operates in over 140 countries.
DefiLlama shows a base TVL of $4.58 billion, stablecoins of $4.93 billion, and 24-hour DEX volume of $854.97 million.
Activities that migrate from Ethereum L1 through Base remain entrenched within the Ethereum security model. Coinbase packages Ethereum blockspace behind its own consumer distribution layer and routes its activity through an execution environment operated by Coinbase.
Hyperliquid demonstrates that liquidity can be organized entirely based on execution quality. DefiLlama shows that Hyperliquid L1 has a TVL of $1.52 billion. This is in addition to 24-hour open interest of $9.37 billion, 7-day trading volume of $42.4 billion, and open interest of $8.94 billion.
Hyperliquid runs a fully on-chain perpetual order book and spot order book on a dedicated chain, and these volume numbers confirm that the perpetual order book has grown large enough to form a self-contained DeFi liquidity center.
Since TVL only captures a small portion of the chain’s activity, open interest and daily sales measure HyperLiquid’s actual market weight.
Solana operates at a scale that puts it in a separate category from specialty rail. CoinGecko shows that Solana, the largest of the chains, has a 24-hour on-chain trading volume of $15.26 billion, and DefiLlama gives it a DeFi dominance of 6.66%.
Solana acts as a high-throughput general-purpose trading venue, distributing flows across DEXs, meme coins, liquid staking, and institutional tokenization efforts simultaneously. Its continued size confirms that the DeFi market maintains both specialized rails and a wide range of competitors.
| chain | Main roles in DeFi | TVL | Key activity metrics | Why did it grow? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BNB Smart Chain | DEX flow linked to Binance | $5.55 billion | 24-hour DEX volume of $739.6 million | Binance distribution, PancakeSwap routing |
| tron | stablecoin payment rail | $5.19 billion | $89.6 billion stablecoin, USDT share 97.86% | Dollar remittance, thin app diversity |
| Bitcoin | BTC Collateral/BTCFi | $5.34 billion | $338,516 24 hours DEX volume | Productive BTC, Collateral Utility |
| base | Ethereum L2 linked to Coinbase | $4.58 billion | 24-hour DEX volume $854.97 million, stablecoin $4.93 billion | Consumer Onboarding, Coinbase Distribution |
| superfluidity | permanent venue | $1.52 billion | 24-hour volume of $9.37 billion and OI of $8.94 billion | Execution quality, dedicated market |
| Solana | General purpose trading venue | Share 6.66% | 24-hour chain trading volume $15.26 billion | High throughput and wide range of app combinations |
What Ethereum Still Controls
Ethereum’s absolute position remains strong. DefiLlama shows $45.4 billion in TVL, $165.5 billion in stablecoins, $1.45 billion in 24-hour DEX volume, and $1.61 billion in 24-hour Perps volume.
Ethereum hosts a premier lending protocol, the deepest stablecoin liquidity pool, and institutional integration that most DeFi infrastructure relies on as a backstop.
The 30-day TVL data adds important context. Ethereum grew 13.9% over this period, alongside Bitcoin’s 13.4%, Base’s 10.5%, Hyperliquid’s 7.3%, Tron’s 6.8%, and BSC’s 2.9%.
The market is expanding simultaneously across multiple chains, and the reallocation of shares reflects specialization across that expansion.
Dominance analyzes built purely on TVL require methodological caution. DefiLlama counts on-chain TVL as part of the total protocol TVL and excludes liquid staking from the on-chain total by default.
Price increases can cause TVL numbers to change even in the absence of net capital inflows, and DefiLlama tracks bridge TVL separately. To get the full picture, we need a stablecoin’s supply, number of transactions, transaction volume and TVL, each of which tells a different story about where DeFi activity is actually concentrated.
Two ways to aim for Ethereum share
If activity focused on stablecoins and lending expands faster than specialized institutions, and Base’s growth is read by the market as strength for the Ethereum stack, Ethereum’s TVL share could recover towards 55% to 58% by the end of 2026.
Ethereum’s $165.5 billion stablecoin infrastructure and depth of blue-chip corporate lending protocols provide the foundation for that path.
As Binance deepens its Alpha integration, Coinbase will continue to push Base through its consumer app layer, BTCFi collateral usage will further expand, Hyperliquid will maintain its dominance of on-chain perpetual assets, and Ethereum’s share will compress from 46% to 50%.
In that scenario, Ethereum would serve as the primary payment and custodial layer for DeFi, with most user-facing activity flowing through specialized venues with better distribution economics.
The real challenge for Ethereum is preserving the payments layer while specialized chains capture use cases with the fastest user growth.
TVL’s absolute lead is large enough to absorb compression, and its stablecoin and institutional depth strengthens its position as DeFi’s core balance sheet.
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