Ethereum volume hits all-time high as DeFi market cap nears $9 billion

Transaction volume for Ethereum applications surpassed $12 billion in July, according to a report published yesterday by DappRadar. “2020 continues to be dedicated to the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem,” wrote the DeFi metrics site in its report.

DappRadar found that Ethereum transaction volumes hit their all-time high in July. DeFi dapps accounted for 92% of all transactions, it found. 

“The biggest contributors to the category were Compound, Aave, and Curve in July 2020. They generated 48%, 14%, and 14% of transaction volumes respectively,” it said.. 

DeFi, or decentralized finance, refers to non-custodial financial applications such as synthetic stocks, decentralized stablecoins, decentralized exchanges and lending protocols. 

DappRadar attributes the rise of DeFi, whose market cap is closing in on $9 billion according to metrics site CoinGecko, to so-called yield farming. 

Some DeFi lending protocols, to encourage loyalty among people earning interest on their platforms, started issuing governance tokens that let users vote on the future of the networks. 

These tokens became valuable, giving users an extra reason to stick around. Compound started in late June when it issued COMP. Then other protocols followed; later came Balancer’s BAL, Yearn Finance’s YFI, mStabe’s MTA, Uma Project’s UMA, and others. 

The tokens soared in value: COMP started trading at $64.50 when it launched on June 17; its daily trading volume upon launch was $155,475, according to metrics site CoinMarketCap. By June 21 COMP was worth $327, and on July 6, trading volume peaked at $304 million. 

Other coins boomed much later. And ETH, the native token of Ethereum, which houses most DeFi protocols, on Sunday hit $411, its highest price in two years. 

DappRadar also attributes some of the growth to volume on DEXes, or decentralized exchanges. Still, these are relatively minor: “Decentralized exchanges account for only 4% of total transaction volumes,” found DappRadar.