There is a quiet transformation underway in decentralized finance (DeFi).
Whereas DeFi’s earlier bull market was pushed by eye-watering—and doubtful—yields and speculative frenzy, the present progress has been powered by the sector turning into a backend monetary layer for user-facing apps and growing institutional participation, in line with a Wednesday report by analytics agency Artemis and on-chain yield platform Vaults.fyi.
The full worth locked (TVL) on high DeFi lending protocols—together with Aave, Euler, Spark and Morpho—has surged previous $50 billion and approaching $60 billion, rising 60% over the previous 12 months, the report confirmed. This progress has been pushed by fast institutionalization and more and more refined threat administration instruments.
“These are not merely yield platforms; they are evolving into modular financial networks undergoing rapid institutionalization,” the authors mentioned.
The ‘DeFi mullet’
One of many key pattern lately the report highlighted is user-facing purposes quietly embedding DeFi infrastructure within the backend to supply yield or loans. These options are abstracted away from customers making a extra seamless expertise, a pattern usually referred to as the “DeFi mullet:” fintech front-end, DeFi backend, the report mentioned.
Coinbase customers, as an example, can borrow towards their bitcoin
holdings powered by DeFi lender Morpho’s backend infrastructure. Greater than $300 million in loans have already originated through this integration as of this month, the report identified.
Bitget Pockets’s integration with lending protocol Aave gives a 5% yield on USDC and USDT holdings throughout chains with out leaving the crypto pockets app. PayPal can be doing one thing related with its PYUSD stablecoin, providing yields close to 3.7% to PayPal and Venmo pockets customers, albeit with out the DeFi component.
The report mentioned crypto-friendly fintech corporations with massive consumer bases, reminiscent of Robinhood or Revolut, may additionally undertake this technique and provide providers like stablecoin credit score traces and asset-backed loans by means of DeFi markets, creating new fee-based income streams.
Tokenized RWAs in DeFi
Increasingly, DeFi protocols are introducing use instances for tokenized variations of conventional devices reminiscent of U.S. Treasuries and credit score funds, often known as real-world belongings (RWA).
These tokenized belongings can function collateral, earn yield straight or be bundled into extra advanced methods.
Learn extra: Tokenized Apollo Credit score Fund Makes DeFi Debut With Levered-Yield Technique by Securitize, Gauntlet
Tokenization of funding methods can be turning into in style. Pendle, a protocol that lets customers break up yield streams from principal, now manages over $4 billion in whole worth locked, a lot of it in tokenized stablecoin yield merchandise.
In the meantime, Ethena’s sUSDe and related yield-bearing tokens have launched merchandise that ship returns above 8% by means of methods like cash-and-carry trades, all whereas abstracting away the operational burden for the tip consumer.
Rise of on-chain asset managers
A much less seen however important pattern highlighted within the report is the rise of crypto-native asset managers. Corporations like Gauntlet, Re7 and Steakhouse Monetary allocate capital throughout DeFi ecosystems utilizing professionally managed methods, resembling the position of conventional asset managers.
These gamers are deeply embedded in DeFi protocol governance, fine-tune threat parameters and deploy capital throughout a variety of structured yield merchandise, tokenized real-world belongings (RWAs) and modular lending markets.
The report famous that the sector’s capital underneath administration has grown fourfold since January—from $1 billion to over $4 billion.
Learn extra: Crypto for Advisors: DeFi Yields, the Revival
