DeFi adoption is booming despite the crypto crash – Despite some protocols choose to launch on other platforms instead of Ethereum, Ethereum’s DeFi space is thriving as the ecosystem is celebrating over 3 million users on the platform. This is remarkable as it has easily tripled the number of unique users set back in December 2020.
Not even a year later, DeFi adoption has exploded and is showing no hints at slowing down. According to Dune Analytics, the unique user count was set at 3,004,620, as of July 13, 2021.
The boom in DeFi adoption is no small part thanks to the rise of more and more Ethereum-native protocols showing up. For instance, crypto fan — Richard Chen, found that the most traction is coming from the following protocols: Aave, Balancer, Compound, Curve, Uniswap.
Specifically, Ethereum’s most popular decentralized exchange — Uniswap, ranked first. It alone holds over 2.3 million unique wallet addresses. Coming in second, Compound, the decentralized money market, holds about 325,000 addresses since its launch.
Although the crypto market has been down since may, the DeFi and NFT marketplaces have seen massive growth despite the crypto dips. The speed of DeFi adoption and growth has far surpassed expectations.
In particular, Mason Nystrom, the Messari Research Analyst, tweets the impressive growth value in DeFi with statistics. He highlights the fact that the move from 1 million to 2 million users took 142 days. In contrast, the move from 2 million to 3 million users only took 78 days.
This was just less than half the time it took to increase users by a million. Indeed, DeFi adoption is growing rapidly. It is only a matter of time when the platform could reach over 5 million and more.
On the other hand, it is not only Ethereum that hosts a DeFi ecosystem for protocols. Polkadot and Tezos are also home to DeFi ecosystems. In fact, some protocols choose to launch in the latter because they are more green and sustainable in comparison to Ethereum’s network. However, this may change once Ethereum 2.0 is fully functional.