DeFi’s meteoric rise continues as locked in value hits $9 billion

Decentralized finance (DeFi) hit another milestone as its locked in value reaches $9.02 billion as DeFi projects gained speed in the past few months.

Aave continues to be the largest DeFi project, with $1.71 billion locked, followed by MakerDAO with $1.43 billion, Balancer at $1.36 billion, Curve Finance at $1.26 billion, yearn.finance at $953.6 million and Synthetix with $871 million. Yearn’s YFI token surged 75% in the past day, with its price hitting $38,883 on Binance. The price moved its market capitalization to $1 billion.

Excitement for DeFi hasn’t waned even with the proliferation of DeFi projects. DeFi tokens have outperformed Bitcoin this year. Tokens related to DeFi infrastructure, like Chainlink’s LINK, have also surged. Exchanges have also listed many of the more popular DeFi tokens.

Despite it’s continued rise, however, industry players still see some issues the DeFi community needs to address to encourage mainstream adoption, such as security and ease of use.