DeFi Tokens Lead Altcoin Season 2020 as Total Value Locked Crossed $2 Billion

Decentralized finance tokens have outperformed their crypto brethren over the past month, with some hitting two-year highs. As the nascent industry keeps growing, which ones will be next?

DeFi has been the darling of the crypto industry over the past month, doubling in total value locked (TVL) in just a few weeks. A new all-time high of $2.12 billion has just been reached, according to Defipulse.com. This represents the dollar equivalent value of all the crypto collateral locked in smart contracts across the decentralized lending and borrowing ecosystem.

This massive surge has outpaced traditional crypto markets, which have remained range-bound in terms of total market capitalization over the past month.

Liquidity Farming Frenzy

The momentum has been driven by a liquidity farming frenzy whereby investors and speculators lock their crypto holdings on DeFi platforms in exchange for impressive rates of interest and token distribution rewards.

Compound Finance was the first to initiate the FOMO with its COMP token that was deployed on June 15. Since then, the asset surged to an all-time high of $327 before returning to around $180 where it currently trades according to Uniswap.info.

Liquidity platform Balancer followed suit, and its BAL token also skyrocketed from a $0.16 seed price to top out over $17. The DeFi token has pulled back to around $10.50 at the time of writing.

DEX protocol 0x has made similar progress with its ZRX token surging to its highest level for over 18 months today. 0x has launched its user-friendly DEX called Matcha, and ZRX is on fire today, topping out at $0.456 after a 15% pump over the past 24 hours.

DeFi platform Aave has been another solid performer with its LEND token surging 54% over the past seven days. Momentum has been driven by new reputation-based lending and borrowing system.

Kyber Network recently launched its long-awaited Katalyst and KyberDAO upgrade with provides staking opportunities for KNC holders. As a result, the token has surged to a two year high of around $2 over the past week or so.

Three Arrows Capital CEO Su Zhu has been watching it all unfold.

Top performing coins over the last 30 days remain DeFi-focused ( $LEND, $SNX)

Past 24hrs has seen double digit pumps from several layer1 coins

Coin dispersion remains high / bimodal. Either its up 50%+ or its flat

sheet powered by @coingecko pic.twitter.com/VjEU2z35yE

— Su Zhu (@zhusu) July 8, 2020

Which Token Next?

The race to launch liquidity farming incentives is on, so the next tokens to look out for are ones with platforms currently developing token distribution plans for decentralized governance.

The Synthetix Network Token (SNX) is one to watch as it, too, has enjoyed solid price gains recently and is still climbing. SNX is currently trading at an all-time high of $2.75, following a 13% pump today.

Ren is another DeFi token to monitor as it is following a similar pattern, climbing 35% over the past week. Ren is a token for a platform that provides a mechanism of wrapping Bitcoin for ERC-20 exchange on DeFi markets.

DeFi platform bZx is working on new tokenomics, so that is another one to keep an eye on in the fast-paced world of decentralized finance. Uniswap could also be entering the fray soon, though today’s crypto winner is actually Dogecoin!