The total amount of Ethereum locked in decentralized finance applications has hit a new all-time high of over 2.4 million ETH, worth around $447 million.
Data from decentralized finance tracking platform Defi Pulse shows that the amount of ether locked in these apps recently surpassed its previous high of 2.332 million ETH, set in April of this year. The total USD value of ETH, Dai, and BTC locked in these apps is of over $660 million.
Source: Defi Pulse
Most of the Ethereum locked in the DeFi market is allocated to Maker (MKR) and its lending products, which represent a total of over $347 million locked, or 52.6% of the market. The Maker platform supports the Dai stablecoin, as users locked ETH as collateral to generate Dai as debt against it.
While only ETH can currently be used as collateral, MakerDAO has announced an upgrade that’ll enable multi-collateral Dai later this month. Other lending DeFi dapps dominate the market, with Compound, dYdX, InstaDApp, and Nuo Network being the top ones.
In total, lending appears to be the main use case for DeFi so far, with close to $500 million locked in these applications. Decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges like Uniswap have a total of $35 million locked in them.
Earning interest on cryptocurrency holdings have has a rather hot topic in the crypto space in general, with various cryptocurrency exchanges adding both lending and staking services to their offering in a bid to attract new users.
Some have, however, been offering the service for a while. OKEx, for example, launched its OK PiggyBank late last year, allowing users to earn on major cryptos like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, EOS, and TRX. Its yields can go up to 4% a year.
#OKPiggyBank pic.twitter.com/JSBmSYimrR
— LAKSHAY ARORA (@AroraLakshay21) July 13, 2019
Using lending services users are able to earn interest while still being free to withdraw their funds whenever they want to – without locking them for specific periods. Often, the interest is earned as the funds are loaned to margin traders who pay to increase their positions.
It’s worth noting Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is also considered a decentralized application in the DeFi space, with around $7.6 million worth of BTC locked in it. Its capacity has been declining since March.
Featured image via Pixabay.
