DeFi Token UMA Surges Above $1 Billion Market Cap

As August gave way to September, some DeFi tokens likewise made way near the top of the DeFi market cap rankings for UMA.

On Tuesday of last week, UMA had a market cap of around $392 million, according to data from CoinMarketCap. A week later, UMA's market cap is north of $1.1 billion. That's enough to put it in second-place behind Chainlink, which has a massive $5.6 billion market cap.

The movement places UMA above yearn.finance, which at this point last week had a market cap of $404 million. While yearn.finance has grown at an explosive rate, it hasn't grown quite as explosively as UMA, instead settling in at around $950 million mark today.

Also in the mix is current DeFi darling Aave, which is relatively stable, at least as far as decentralized finance goes. It's moved downward, from $988 billion to $957 billion, over the last seven days.

With the market cap for some DeFi coins doubling in the course of a week, it means that tomorrow, of course, things may look very different. Sushi, for example, didn't exist last week. Now, it has a market cap of $188 million, good for 74th on CoinMarketCap's rankings.

UMA, short for Universal Market Access, refers to itself as a "decentralized financial contracts  platform." Its token uses the ERC-20 standard from the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to create their own synthetic tokens—and derivatives contracts.

In the Wild West world of DeFi, of course, users are looking to create more than just tokens. They're in it for the money. And there's a lot of it trading hands at the moment. How valuable all those assets will be this time next week, however, is anyone's guess.