The DeFi market is stabilizing at $160.56 billion in TVL, but data shows a liquidity split between spot and derivatives, while collateral remains clustered in just a few major venues. Meanwhile, spot, perpetuals, and stablecoin bases are expanding in parallel, suggesting that order flow and collateral are recycled across fewer but more efficient protocols.

The past week saw the market cap of stablecoins rise to $289.67 billion, up 1.32% week over week, with Tether holding a 58.9% share at around $170.6 billion. This stable base has enabled both spot and perpetual markets to expand nearly $20 billion each on the week, keeping execution split almost evenly: spot trading volumes totaled $114.13 billion versus $124.66 billion in perps.

On a 24-hour basis, the market is nearly balanced with $19.43 billion in spot flow and $18.83 billion in derivatives. This near-parity shows that traders are engaging with DeFi at multiple layers: speculative leverage through perps and settlement-driven flows through spot DEXs.

It also suggests that funding rates are more closely tied to stablecoin issuance than to new external inflows, which may keep markets sensitive to stablecoin policy changes.

Metric
Current
Period
WoW / Notes

Total Value Locked (TVL)
$160.56 billion
24h
-0.46%

Stablecoins Market Cap
$289.672 billion
–
+1.32% 7d

USDT Dominance
58.90%
–
Implied USDT ≈ $170.62 billion

DEX Spot Volume
$19.433 billion
24h
$114.134 billion 7d (+21.05% WoW)

Perpetuals Volume
$18.832 billion
24h
$124.658 billion 7d (+19.63% WoW)

Spot vs Perps Split
≈ 51% / 49%
24h
Spot slightly ahead on the day

RWA TVL
$15.397 billion
–
+6.65% 7d (~9.6% of DeFi TVL)

Upcoming Token Unlocks
$307.15 million
14 days
–

(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)

Liquidity is not evenly distributed across DeFi. Aave, Lido, and EigenLayer alone account for more than $100 billion of TVL, or 62% of the entire sector. Adding Binance-staked ETH and Ethena brings the share to over 80%.

This level of concentration shows how much of DeFi is tied to lending, liquid staking, and restaking rather than other on-chain applications. Weekly inflows were strongest into Aave (+$1.9B), Lido (+$1.6B), and Spark (+$1.8B), while Maker’s Sky system saw a contraction of about $160 million.

#
Protocol
TVL
7d Change
1m Change
Mcap/TVL
Revenue (30d)

1
Aave
$41.813b
+4.76%
+10.79%
0.11
$13.22m

2
Lido
$39.028b
+4.22%
-1.59%
0.027
$9.24m

3
EigenLayer
$19.308b
+2.49%
-6.18%
0.026
–

4
Binance staked ETH
$15.452b
+7.60%
+7.99%
–
$3.18m

5
Ethena
$13.909b
+6.20%
+21.36%
0.35
$2.42m

6
Pendle
$12.912b
+9.96%
+39.65%
0.064
$5.4m

7
ether.fi
$11.378b
+3.81%
-4.42%
0.059
$6.55m

8
Spark
$9.12b
+25.01%
+10.74%
0.011
$4.47m

9
Morpho
$8.535b
+7.84%
+30.60%
0.075
–

10
Babylon Protocol
$6.754b
+9.64%
+15.30%
0.019
–

11
Uniswap
$5.926b
+1.52%
-4.50%
0.92
–

12
Sky (Maker)
$5.926b
-2.64%
-11.91%
0.28
$19.15m

13
JustLend
$5.232b
+3.81%
+0.76%
0.063
$45,182

14
Veda
$4.309b
-0.23%
-3.18%
–
–

15
Jito
$3.565b
+9.99%
+21.21%
0.20
$972,148

(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)

A concentration like this increases the systemic interlinkages: most of the collateral is either Ethereum or liquid staking tokens that depend on ETH security. This means liquidity shocks in ETH markets will propagate across multiple DeFi layers simultaneously.

It also shows how limited the innovation funnel has become: capital continues to cycle into staking and lending primitives rather than novel use cases, making growth more a result of scale than diversification.

Spot markets are increasingly polarized between established players and fast-growing new venues. Uniswap processed $23.47 billion in weekly trades, keeping a 20.6% share of all spot volume.

PancakeSwap followed with $15.48 billion, but its weekly flow jumped 129%, making it the largest gainer among top-tier DEXs. Solana-based Meteora advanced even further, growing 170% to $7.51 billion. Hyperliquid’s spot DEX posted $6.82 billion with a 178% increase, while Orca showed the same rate of growth, signaling strong rotation of flows into emerging pools.

At the same time, Raydium’s weekly turnover collapsed by 48% to $4.6 billion. This tells us Solana routing is being redistributed toward new venues such as Meteora. It also shows us that traders are not loyal to a single AMM and tend to quickly migrate to venues with better incentives or more efficient liquidity routing.

The outcome is a DeFi market in which smaller but faster-moving protocols can temporarily capture very large flows but must maintain constant innovation or incentives to keep that share.

#
DEX
TVL
Spot Volume (24h)
Spot Volume (7d)
7d Change

1
Uniswap
$5.926b
$4.29b
$23.468b
+16.44%

2
PancakeSwap
$2.349b
$2.458b
$15.48b
+129%

3
Meteora
$885.51m
$1.295b
$7.506b
+170%

4
Hyperliquid (Spot)
$692.6m
$770.68m
$6.823b
+178%

5
HumidiFi
–
$1.349b
$5.648b
+33.26%

6
Fluid
$1.763b
$1.117b
$5.2b
+58.19%

7
Pump
$320.01m
$770.16m
$4.95b
+41.86%

8
Aerodrome
$691.18m
$865.68m
$4.858b
+73.56%

9
Raydium
$2.563b
$697.46m
$4.602b
-48.40%

10
Orca
$443.25m
$655.03m
$4.098b
+178%

(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)

Perpetual markets remain nearly as large as spot activity. With $124.66 billion in seven-day volume, perps added more than $20 billion compared to the week before. The weekly total was still about $10 billion higher than spot volumes. A close 24-hour split between spot and perps shows that risk is evenly shared between taker execution and derivatives positioning.

Hyperliquid and Pump.fun stand out from other protocols. Both saw significant growth over the past year, but have been champions in monetizing activity. Pump generated $57.9 million in revenue over 30 days from only $320 million of TVL, implying fee intensity above 18% per month. Hyperliquid’s $96.3 million in revenue against $692 million TVL implies about a 14% monthly fee yield.

These ratios dwarf those of lending markets such as Aave, which earned just $13.2 million on $41.8 billion of TVL, a fee intensity of only 0.03%. This extreme divergence shows how derivatives venues effectively “print” revenue out of volatility, while lending and staking remain utility layers with little direct fee capture. If these economics persist, token valuations for trading protocols will stay elevated relative to collateral-heavy protocols.

Protocol
Revenue (30d)
TVL
Revenue / TVL (30d)

Pump
$57.88m
$320.01m
18.09%

Hyperliquid
$96.25m
$692.60m
13.90%

Aerodrome
$14.96m
$691.18m
2.16%

Jupiter
$25.57m
$3.478b
0.74%

Aave
$13.22m
$41.813b
0.03%

Lido
$9.24m
$39.028b
0.02%

(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)

With nearly $290 billion in circulation, stablecoins provide the ballast for both sides of the market. USDT alone at over $170 billion serves as the dominant settlement layer for centralized and decentralized venues.

Revenue concentration data shows the outsized role of stablecoin issuers: Tether and Circle together generated $863 million in revenue over the past 30 days, or 72% of all protocol-level income among the leaders tracked. Adding Hyperliquid and Pump pushes that to 85%.

Issuer
Revenue (30d)
Notes

Tether
$642.31m
Largest share of issuer revenue

Circle
$220.65m
Second-largest among issuers

(Source: DeFi Llama, Sept. 16, 2025)

This concentration means that stablecoin issuers have effectively become the central banks of DeFi, setting the pace for liquidity expansion through their issuance. It also implies that regulatory or market disruptions affecting USDT or USDC could ripple instantly into DeFi activity, throttling both spot and derivative volumes.

The fact that most DEX and perp activity is quoted in these stablecoins reinforces their role as the structural backbone of decentralized trading, with little diversification into alternative settlement units other than ETH.

The data shows us that the DeFi market is shaped by three distinct forces: the concentration of collateral in lending and staking, the redistribution of spot volume towards DEXs on Solana and Base, and the fee-intensive activity of derivatives and stablecoin issuers.

Spot and perps are balanced in dollar terms, but the economic gravity has moved to a small group of protocols that capture the overwhelming majority of capital and revenue. Liquidity is abundant but highly clustered; execution quality depends on the choice of the trading venue, while systemic dependence on stablecoin issuers and leverage is higher than ever.

We now have a market where participation looks broad on the surface, with hundreds of protocols and dozens of large chains. However, effective control of both users and capital rests with fewer than 20 names. This creates efficiency but increases systemic risk.

The balance between innovation, incentives, and capital safety will decide whether DeFi continues to grow and become more resilient or remains hostage to the same few players that dominate it today.

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