25 important stats about the DeFi industry from 2022

On the one hand, DeFi projects had countless hacks and one of the most disastrous collapses in tech/internet history with Terra. Combined with macro conditions, these factors caused the DeFi market to decline significantly, even more than other blockchain sectors, last year.

On the other hand, you can’t have GameFi without DeFi, and NFT marketplaces are increasingly integrating DeFi elements like staking and tokenization.

In the year’s second half, NFTs and GameFi overtook DeFi in public and investor interest. However, DeFi is far from dead. Even though the vast majority of DeFi projects ceased to be active (as this list will show), several protocols and categories performed well, indicating that—weathering the storm so far—they are likely to survive the bear market and thrive in the future.

In the spirit of DYOR, we’ve collected the most important stats about DeFi from 2022, so you can look into the industry. By looking back on the year, you can make smarter investments and analyses in the future.

9 Stats about the DeFi Market

The total TVL in DeFi decreased from $267B at the beginning of January to $53B by the end of the year.

The crypto DeFi sector had a rough year, whose downturn kicked off with Fed rate hikes, exacerbated by the collapse of Terra and continued hacks, collapses, and macro conditions.

Reference: DeFi TVL

The total number of DeFi protocols increased from 1,080 in January to a peak of 1596 in September, then remained nearly stagnant.

Note that not all of these protocols are active. As seen in Stat 9, less than 100 are currently active.

Reference: Monthly Total Number of DeFi Protocols

The biggest collapse in DeFi history happened from May 4 to May 14 with the collapse of Terra

The Terra network was a Layer 1 blockchain known for its high yields and algorithmic stablecoin, UST.

Reference: Terra Dashboard

DEXs remained the largest type to DeFi protocol with 34% of total TVL, while lending protocols increased from 18% to 20%

This is unsurprisingly, given that DEXs play a critical part in DeFi infrastructure. In the future, lending protocols will have a more difficult time considering the consequences of over-leveraging in 2022.

Reference: TVL Distribution on Different Category (2021) and TVL Distribution on Different Category (Click to Explore More)

The market cap of DeFi tokens reached its peak on April 3 at $243B, 4% below its ATH ($253B) from the previous year on Dec. 26

This stat has the market cap of DeFi tokens as the sum of tokens issued by DeFi protocols. It does not include L1 and L2 tokens commonly used for DeFi, like Ethereum and Solana.

Reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs BTC Market Cap

As of Dec. 31, the market cap of DeFi tokens was $40.52B

By comparison, the market cap of BTC on this date was $318.41B

Reference: DeFi Token Market Cap vs BTC Market Cap

From the end of November to the beginning of December, BTC had its biggest price decorrelation from the S&P 500 in recent history, reaching -0.83

The stock market correlation index is measured from a 1 to -1 scale, with 1 indicating the two sets of prices are always moving in the same direction and -1 that they’re never moving in the same direction.

Reference: 2022: BTC & S&P 500 Price Correlation Analysis

The Fear & Greed index reached its yearly low on June 6, at 6 (extreme fear)

By comparison, it reached the 8-10 range in the immediate aftermath of the Terra Luna collapse and remained above 10 after the FTX collapse.

Reference: 2022 Token Price VS F&G

The number of active DeFi projects declined 33% year-on-year

An active project is defined by Footprint Analytics’ average daily active users in the past five days is greater than 100.