Cardano DeFi TVL Surpasses 400M ADA Coins

In terms of ADA, the total value of assets locked on Cardano’s decentralized finance ecosystem reached an all-time high of 417.7 million coins on May 14.

While the TVL has dropped to 409.86 million coins as of press time, the increase suggested that the Cardano DeFi ecosystem was thriving.

In US Dollar terms, DeFi activities on Cardano had grown consistently since the start of the year when the TVL was just around $50 million.

However, that figure has tripled in less than six months to $151.08 million — though still significantly lower than its all-time high of over $300 million.

Minswap Leads Top 5 Protocols

The dominant DeFi protocol on Cardano is the decentralized exchange (DEX) Minswap, accounting for $55.7 million of the total TVL.

A decentralized non-custodial synthetic assets protocol Indigo follows the DEX, with a TVL of $29.67 million. Over the past week, the two protocols saw the number of assets locked on them grow by 10.55% and 8.35%, respectively.

WingRiders DEX ranks third with a TVL of $15.61 million, while Cardano’s first stablecoin Djed has $13.75 million locked in TVL. Lending protocol Liqwid completes the top 5 with a TVL of $11.97 million.

DeFi protocols like Aada and FluidTokens grew significantly during the last seven days.

Over 1000 Smart Contracts Deployed on Cardano in 2023

According to Lookerstudio, Cardano has recorded more than 1000 Plutus V1 smart contracts in 2023 — another indication of the increased activity on the blockchain network.

However, the activity level still pales significantly compared to Ethereum, where there are usually more than 100,000 smart contracts weekly.

Analysts have suggested that Ethereum’s recent network congestion and high gas fees could push more users to cheaper alternatives like Cardano. Following the meme coins craze, gas fees on Ethereum reached a 10-month high as more traders looked to profit from the market.

ADA Price Still Struggling

Despite the increase in network activity and TVL, ADA continues to trade under $1. According to BeInCrypto data, ADA is down roughly 10% in the last 30 days and was selling for $0.3658 at the time of writing.

IntoTheBlock data showed that 73% of Cardano investors are currently holding the token at a loss.