Top Ethereum Projects by Total Value Locked (TVL) in 2022

INTRODUCTION

The birth of Bitcoin right after the 2008 recession after the bursting of the US housing bubble and the global financial crisis – was the rise of a tide. However, it opened a world of new opportunities, that eventually led to the formation of what is hailed as the ‘second generation’ of crypto – Ethereum. Ethereum was created with the objective of creating a blockchain platform that had the capability of creating and running smart contracts on the network.

So ever since July of 2015 – when Ethereum was launched – it revolutionised the way people could interact with cryptos and since then, the Ethereum Blockchain has become the home to the largest number of crypto projects built on top of it. These Ethereum projects include decentralised finance protocols that include decentralised exchanges, lending and borrowing protocols, yield farming and even games through which people could earn money!

In this article, we are going to talk about the top Ethereum based projects that you need to look out for in 2022. Now, the list will be categorised by decentralised finance protocols with the highest total valued locked.

Also Read: Decentralized Finance vs. Traditional Finance: What You Need To Know?

Top Ethereum Crypto Projects by Total Value Locked (TVL)

1. MAKERDAO (MKR)

 Known for its lending & borrowing functionalities

MakerDAO is basically a decentralised organisation that is built on the Ethereum blockchain that is focused on developing technology to facilitate multiple functionalities like lending and borrowing, savings along with maintaining a stablecoin (called DAI). It essentially does this with the use of a smart contract service that manages borrowing and lending, as well as two currencies: DAI and MKR to regulate the value of loans.

The purpose behind this project was to enable the feature of borrowing one crypto using another crypto. Now this is a very complicated thing because cryptos tend to be extremely volatile and fluctuate quickly to market movements. So the amount someone borrowed in crypto and the amount someone had to pay back could be wildly different over a short period of time.

This is where MakerDAO comes in to help – by combining a stable currency – MakerDAO wants to allow anyone to borrow money and reliably predict how much they have to pay back.

Founded by Rune Christensen, it was initially launched in December 2017 for the public and since then has gone to amass a huge amount of money in the total-value-locked in the protocol, which is over $8.4 billion. Its native governance token, MKR is currently worth around $990, down over 85% from its ATH of over $6500. According to CoinMarketCap – it has a total market capitalisation of $944 billion as of now.

Read more: MAKER Price Prediction

2. LIDO DAO (LDO)

The most popular liquid staking solution

Lido is a liquid staking solution for PoS blockchain networks. It works by aggregating node operator partners who run the underlying validator infrastructure on Ethereum, Solana & Terra blockchains. This was launched in December 202 when Ethereum 2.0, also known as the Beacon Chain – Ethereum’s PoS chain first entered Phase 0 of development – when prospective validators had to stake 32 ETH to the ETH2.0 smart contract.

Lido comes in here to provide liquidity by issuing stETH in exchange for users depositiing ETH – thus allowing them to earn staking rewards on Etheruem 2.0 while maintaining liquidity and reducing the 32 ETH requirement to any amount. Lido also provides the functionality for users to ‘unstake’ their stETH for the corresponding amount of ETH2.0 on the Beacon Chain.

The total-value-locked under this protocol is close to $6.3 billion worth of Ethereum and its native token, LDO has a market cap of about $472 million.

Additional Read: Total Value Locked in DeFi

3. UNISWAP (UNI)

One of the biggest decentralised crypto exchange in the space

Uniswap is a crypto exchange which uses a decentralised network protocol. Uniswap is the name of the company that initially built the network. The protocol is responsible for automated transactions between crypto exchanges on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts.

Towards the end of 2020, Uniswap was the largest decentralised crypto exchange and the fourth largest crypto exchange overall in terms of trading volumes.

Also Read: How does UniSwap work?

Built by Hayden Adams and launched in November 2018, Uniswap quickly became extremely popular among those wanting to trade through a decentralised crypto exchange to avoid governmental and regulatory hassles. But despite its popularity and use, Uniswap has been the hardest hit crypto in this entire list, having fallen over 93% from its all-time highs. Also, this token touched its ATH back in June 2021, and since then has been on a downward trajectory, much against the rest of the market which created new ATHs between October and November 2021.

Additional Read: Uniswap Technical Analysis

4. AAVE

Most known for its reliable borrowing & lending protocol

Aave (AAVE) is a decentralised lending protocol, that allows borrowers and lenders to interact without the need for any centralized intermediary. Due to its immense popularity, the project was initially hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, is now integrated across multiple blockchain networks thanks to its immense popularity.

As with other DAO crypto projects, holders of the AAVE token have the right to talk about the protocol’s governance like how Treasury funds are used and potential upgrades to the system. Also, AAVE can be used as collateral within the ecosystem, which helps in significantly reducing fees.

AAVE has lost over 90% from its all-time-high thanks to the bear run in the crypt0 market than began early in 2022. Once trading around $600-700, it is now trading just below $100. According to data from DefiLlama, AAVE’s TVL is over $4.32 billion as of writing this article and the market cap of its native token is close to $1.27 billion.

Read more: AAVE Price Prediction

5. CONVEX FINANCE (CVX)

DeFi protocol that rewards who stake cryptos to AMMs

Convex Finance is a decentralised finance protocol that allows crypto asset holders to generate passive income by means of providing liquidity to an automated market maker (AMM) for a decentralised exchange (DEX) known as Curve. It is basically a DEX that incorporated an AMM to perform this function and thus enable complete permission-less exchange of digital assets. Users can add its native CRV token to different liquidity pools and earn fees by locking up their crypto assets.

This is a project designed by a team of anonymous developers – Convex Finance was essentially meant to provide a platform to those crypto holders who want to stake their cryptos for some passive income on top of the price appreciation of the crypto itself. The platform charges no withdrawal fee and only minimal performance fees.

Launched on 17 May, 2021 – this token quickly gained popularity thanks to its unique utility and went on to touch $60 before falling over 86% and is now trading around $6.9.

Also Read: Top 10 Crypto to Invest

CONCLUSION

So with the explosion of the crypto space, more and more decentralised finance projects are bound to enter the space with more innovative solutions to real world problems. Thus, with these coins having a head start in the space, and based on the largest smart contract blockchain network by TVL and market cap makes them the most attractive recovery candidates going forward.

SO, HOW CAN YOU INVEST IN THESE PROJECTS?

Today investing in these Ethereum based project tokens is extremely simple with the CoinDCX App! Just download the CoinDCX App crypto investing app, enter the details required and wait for your profile to get verified. Once done, fund your wallet and buy any of the coin of your choice.

Prices as of 21st July, 2022

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