DefiLlama's global dashboard shows that as of May 22, the TVL of DeFi is $180.4 billion, which is only 6.4% lower than the $192.8 billion TVL recorded on January 31.
Original Source: cryptoslate
Translation: Blockchain Knight
According to data from Token Terminal, as of May 21, the active loan volume in decentralized lending applications has surged to a historic high of $23.723 billion.
Meanwhile, the TVL of the DeFi ecosystem has decreased by 6.4% from the level on January 31, which was the day before former U.S. President Donald Trump officially proposed his import tariff plan.
The surge in outstanding loans continues the expansion trend that began in early April, when the lending market regained momentum alongside the broader recovery in crypto asset prices.
Token Terminal data shows that driven by the deepening liquidity of Aave, Morpho, and Compound, the total loan volume has increased by approximately $8.5 billion since April 8.
The $23.723 billion active loan volume is about $3 billion higher than the previous cycle peak set in December 2021, highlighting the increasingly important role of uncollateralized credit in crypto-native trading, leveraged staking, and basis trading strategies.
DefiLlama's global dashboard shows that as of May 22, the TVL of DeFi is $180.4 billion, which is only 6.4% lower than the $192.8 billion TVL recorded on January 31.
This benchmark is significant because it occurs the day before the White House confirmed the signing of an executive order activating new import tariffs, which are currently in a 90-day grace period.
The formal announcement of the tariff plan prompted BTC prices to gradually decline by 27% from February 1 to April 8, reaching the lowest price level of the year on April 8. During the same period, the TVL of the DeFi ecosystem also fell by nearly 36%.
Additionally, collateral primarily consisting of Ethereum, staked ETH derivatives, and stablecoins also shrank accordingly, bottoming out at around $110 billion in mid-March.
The rise in loan balances indicates an increasing demand for leverage among professional traders. Many are borrowing stablecoins to fund long positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum or to capture basis trading and liquidity mining yields.
However, the collateral for these loans is the net result of lending activity in standard TVL calculations.
Therefore, the simultaneous increase in lending and collateral withdrawals may lead to a flat or even declining overall TVL, while credit activity accelerates. This again confirms the scenario of utilizing lending protocols for on-chain leveraged operations.
Lending yields have also played a role. Since April, the average annualized interest rate for USDC deposits on Aave and Morpho-Aave has fluctuated between 6% and 8%, far exceeding short-term U.S. Treasury yields.
This has prompted stablecoin deposits to shift from passive reserves to lending pools. Higher utilization rates have driven up loan balances, but the impact on TVL has been limited, as stablecoins typically enter the protocol at a 1:1 dollar ratio.
The record active loan volume of $23.723 billion and the 6.4% TVL gap indicate that even though the total collateral volume remains slightly below the peak at the end of January, the market's demand for credit is accelerating.
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