Ethereum loses 10% of its DeFi market share as rival chains close in

Ethereum's share of the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi compressed from 63.5% at the start of 2025 to around 54% as of May 7, hovering near the lowest level recorded since May 2025.

DefiLlama puts Ethereum's current TVL at $45.4 billion, while the chains absorbing share have each staked out a distinct function, such as decentralized exchange (DEX) flow, stablecoin settlement, BTC collateral, consumer onboarding, and perpetuals trading.

Solana holds 6.66% of DeFi TVL, BNB Chain 6.60%, Bitcoin 6.35%, Tron 6.17%, Base 5.44%, and Hyperliquid 1.81%. That clustering defines that DeFi has moved from a single Ethereum-centered hub into a network of specialized rails.

Which chains captured market

BSC built its position on Binance-linked distribution. In the second quarter of 2025, CoinGecko reported that PancakeSwap volume surged 539.2% quarter-over-quarter to $392.6 billion, accounting for 45% of top-10 DEX volume, with Binance Alpha routing trades directly through PancakeSwap.

DefiLlama currently shows BSC with $5.55 billion in TVL and $739.6 million in 24-hour DEX volume. Binance has deepened that integration via Alpha Earn, which lets users provide liquidity to PancakeSwap V3 directly from Binance Wallet, and Alpha 2.0 embeds DEX trading inside the Binance Exchange interface.

Binance controls the front end, PancakeSwap executes the trade, and BSC collects the volume.
Tron operates on a different axis. DefiLlama shows $89.6 billion in stablecoins on Tron, with USDT accounting for 97.86% of that figure, while 24-hour DEX volume stands at only $55.5 million.

Tron's DeFi TVL of $5.19 billion understates its role as the chain with the largest stablecoin flows in crypto, running as a dollar-settlement rail with thin app diversity and enormous throughput.

Bitcoin's DeFi TVL reached $5.34 billion, with 6.35% dominance, up 13.4% over 30 days, despite a 24-hour DEX volume of just $338,516. The difference defines the BTCFi thesis is capital migrating onto Bitcoin to generate yield and collateralize.

Bitcoin's DeFi role is emerging as a productivity layer, one where capital earns through collateral and lending protocols.

Base is the most consequential part of the competitive map because it operates inside the Ethereum stack while eroding Ethereum L1's headline share. Coinbase built Base as an Ethereum layer-2 (L2) on the OP Stack, and the distribution advantage is that Base App operates in more than 140 countries.

DefiLlama shows $4.58 billion in Base TVL, $4.93 billion in stablecoins, and $854.97 million in 24-hour DEX volume.

Activity that migrates from Ethereum L1 through Base continues to settle within the Ethereum security model. Coinbase has packaged Ethereum blockspace behind its own consumer distribution layer and routes that activity through a Coinbase-operated execution environment.

Hyperliquid demonstrates that liquidity can now be organized entirely around execution quality. DefiLlama shows $1.52 billion in TVL on Hyperliquid L1, alongside $9.37 billion in 24-hour perpetuals volume, $42.4 billion over 7 days, and $8.94 billion in open interest.

Hyperliquid runs fully on-chain perpetual and spot order books on a purpose-built chain, and those volume figures confirm that perpetuals have grown large enough to form a self-contained DeFi liquidity center.

Open interest and daily turnover measure Hyperliquid's actual market weight, as TVL captures only a fraction of the chain's activity.

Solana operates at a scale that puts it in a separate category from the specialized rails. CoinGecko shows $15.26 billion in 24-hour chain trading volume on Solana, the largest of any chain, and DefiLlama puts its DeFi dominance at 6.66%.

Solana functions as a high-throughput general-purpose trading venue, distributing flow across DEXes, memecoins, liquid staking, and institutional tokenization efforts simultaneously. Its continued scale confirms that the DeFi market sustains both specialized rails and broad-based competitors.

What Ethereum still controls

Ethereum's absolute position is still strong. DefiLlama shows $45.4 billion in TVL, $165.5 billion in stablecoins, $1.45 billion in 24-hour DEX volume, and $1.61 billion in 24-hour perps volume.

Ethereum hosts the blue-chip lending protocols, the deepest stablecoin liquidity pools, and the institutional integrations that most DeFi infrastructure relies on as a backstop.

The 30-day TVL data adds important context: Ethereum grew 13.9% over that period, alongside Bitcoin at 13.4%, Base at 10.5%, Hyperliquid at 7.3%, Tron at 6.8%, and BSC at 2.9%.

The market is expanding across multiple chains simultaneously, and share redistribution reflects specialization across that expansion.

Any dominance analysis built purely on TVL needs a methodological caveat. DefiLlama counts chain TVL as the sum of protocol TVL and excludes liquid staking from chain totals by default.

Price appreciation can move TVL figures without net capital inflows, and DefiLlama tracks bridge TVL separately. A complete picture requires stablecoin supply, transaction counts, and trading volumes alongside TVL, each of which tells a different story about where DeFi activity is actually concentrated.

Two paths for Ethereum's share

If stablecoin- and lending-heavy activity expands faster than specialist venues, and if Base's growth is read in the market as Ethereum stack strength, Ethereum's TVL share could recover toward 55%-58% by end-2026.

Ethereum's $165.5 billion stablecoin base and its depth in blue-chip lending protocols provide the foundation for that path.

If Binance deepens Alpha integration, Coinbase keeps pushing Base through its consumer app layer, BTCFi collateral use expands further, and Hyperliquid maintains its grip on on-chain perpetuals, Ethereum's share compresses toward 46%-50%.

In that scenario, Ethereum functions as DeFi's primary settlement and custody layer while most user-facing activity flows through specialized venues with better distribution economics.

Ethereum's real challenge is holding the settlement layer while specialist chains capture the use cases with the fastest user growth.

The absolute TVL lead is large enough to absorb compression, and the stablecoin and institutional depth reinforce its position as DeFi's core balance sheet.

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