DeFi Soars to New Heights with Record TVL Increase in Q1

• DeFi had a successful Q1 in spite of the bear market, with an increase in TVL and new focus on Arbitrum
• Binance still dominated DeFi with 449,000 unique active wallets, yet Polygon and Arbitrum saw notable increases in users and total value locked respectively
• GMX accounts for over 80% of all TVL in Arbirum after its air drop attracted a large number of users

Defi Performance in Q1

DeFi had a successful Q1 despite experiencing a drop in the number of active users due to the overall bear market. The data from DappRadar showed that the industry closed the quarter with $83.3 billion in total value locked (TVL), which was a 37 percent increase from the previous quarter. This was mainly driven by Arbitrum’s long-awaited airdrop which distributed over 1 billion ARB tokens to around 600,000 users, pushing the total value locked (TVL) on the platform up by 118%.

Active Wallets

The majority of these dUAWs (daily unique active wallets) are active on Binance, which registered 449,000 this quarter – although this is still 28 percent lower than last quarter’s 629,000. Wax took second place with nearly 400,000 dUAWs while Polygon saw an impressive 25 percent increase surpassing 197,000 unique wallets per day. However none rivaled Arbitrum whose number of dUAWs increased by 125% compared to last quarter.

GMX Perpetual Futures Trading

GMX is decentralized exchange offering perpetual future trading and accounted for over 80 percent of all TVL in Arbirum at closing this quarter. This is likely due to its air drop attracting a large number of users who were interested in its services.

New Focus on Arbitrum

Increased interest in Arbitrum also increased total value locked (TVL) across all DeFI applications as it closed out this quarter with $3.2 billion – considerably higher than any other blockchain platform reported by DappRadar.

Conclusion

Despite bear market conditions impacting user numbers across all crypto sectors during Q1 2023; DeFi experienced significant growth with regards to both Total Value Locked and unique active wallet numbers – primarily driven by the interest generated around Arbitrums much anticipated airdrop.