The widely-used non-custodial exchange Uniswap set a record surpassing $2 billion in total value locked (TVL). The leading tokens by circulation in Uniswap are Ether, Tether (USDT), and Wrapped bitcoin.
UniSwap got ahead of other DeFi protocols for 18%. Alongside with yield farming growing, the entire TVL of other protocols reached now $11 billion. After UniSwap, comes Decentralized credit platform MakerDAO. It also has a pretty good chance to strike $2 B as at the moment MakerDao's total value locked is $1.95 billion. Aave is the third with $1.54 billion in TVL.
TVL sure is an important aspect of DeFi activity analysis, but it can increase without any new users or value coming into DeFi. This figure depends highly on the price of ETH.
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So, there are other metrics that must be taken into account. One of them is a decentralized exchange volume.