2025 Year #DeFi Panorama Review: The Retreat of Frenzy and the Formation of Structure

In 2025, DeFi experienced a classic rollercoaster market cycle of **“peak frenzy → Q4 flash crash → calm reversion”**.
The total value locked (TVL) reached a historic high of 277.6 billion USD at one point, then rapidly declined in Q4 to 189.3 billion USD, with an annual increase of only 3.86%.
Prices fluctuated while the structural consolidation accelerated.
1️⃣ Market Pattern: Winner Takes All, Top Players Stronger
The top 14 protocols account for over 75% of TVL, further deepening monopolization.
Meanwhile, the top protocols’ annual revenue doubled to 5.02 billion USD.
👉 DeFi is shifting from “grassroots innovation” to “platform oligopoly competition.”
2️⃣ Staking Track: From Yield Tool Back to Security Foundation
TVL fell from a peak of 92.1 billion USD to 55.2 billion USD.
The myth of high APY was shattered; staking is now redefined as:
👉 Consensus security and infrastructure, not a printing press.
3️⃣ Lending Track: Scale Peaks, Governance Slows
TVL hit a record high of 125 billion USD, stabilizing at 91.6 billion USD by year-end.
‍$AAVE Holds over 50% market share, maintaining first place.
However, internal governance splits and ideological disputes have become systemic risks.
👉 DeFi is beginning to be slowed down by “political costs” for the first time.
4️⃣ Yield Protocols: From Products to Infrastructure
TVL rose to 9.1 billion USD.
No longer just “strategy packaging,” they have become the underlying yield modules for various protocols.
5️⃣ DEX: Experience Matches, Market Share Rises
‍#DEX once accounted for 21.71% of spot trading.
User experience, routing, and slippage continue to approach CEX levels.
👉 The era of “decentralized exchanges being difficult to use” is ending.
6️⃣ Perp DEX: The True Explosion Point
Contract open interest surpassed 16 billion USD.
Trading volume share surged to 17%.
👉 Leverage and derivatives are becoming the core battleground of DeFi.
7️⃣ RWA: First to Withstand the Pullback
Tokenized assets’ total market cap exceeded 20 billion USD.
Tokenized US Treasuries are becoming the “conveyor belt” connecting TradFi yields with DeFi.
During market corrections, they show clear counter-cyclical properties.
👉 #RWA Are no longer just concepts but practical tools for hedging volatility.
8️⃣ Stablecoins: New Scale, Risks Coexist
Market cap once approached 300 billion USD.
$USDT + USDC continue to dominate in a bipolar monopoly.
Yield-bearing stablecoins surged in size, but frequent risk events occurred.
👉 Behind the yields, there is a simultaneous increase in strategy complexity and systemic risks.
Summary in One Sentence
2025 is not the year of DeFi’s bull market, but the “year of structural formation.”
After the bubble deflates, what remains is not a hundred flowers blooming, but oligopolies, infrastructure-based development, and a pragmatic path closer to traditional finance.