DeFi market cap explodes, surpasses $15 billion

Another day, another billion dollars. The total market cap of DeFi, or decentralized finance, is now $15 billion, according to metrics site Coin Gecko.

The growth is staggering. On August 9, DeFi's market cap hit $11 billion. By August 12, $13 billion. And now four days later—the rise almost like clockwork in DeFi's steampunk utopia—the market cap hits $15 billion. As of today, DeFi's market cap is $15.1 billion.

The huge rise is of course down to the prominence of Chainlink, the decentralized price oracle that's responsible for 49.2% of DeFi's market cap. Chainlink seems to rise every weekend, and this weekend resulted in a huge price bump of about 13% in under 24 hours. Chainlink is now the fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the only one dedicated to DeFi.

And to be clear: market capitalization refers to a token's supply multiplied by its price. The total DeFi market cap is all of the DeFi-related market caps totted up. This is different from the "total value locked" (TVL) in DeFi, a statistic that refers to the amount of crypto locked up in DeFi smart contracts—most of the popular ones are non-custodial lending protocols. The total value locked in DeFi protocols is nearing $6 billion, up from $5 billion on Friday.

The continued rise of DeFi, both in market cap and total value locked, suggests that the current bull run is far from over.