The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has had a difficult month, with plummeting transaction volume and a series of hacks and exploits. According to DefiLlama, Sunday saw the lowest daily total since January 1, with only $1.12 billion in transactional volume. Total value locked (TVL) dropped from $45.3 billion to $42.9 billion in July, as the sector failed to counteract falling asset prices. Ether (ETH) traded down from $1,920 to $1,850, and bitcoin (BTC) failed to break through resistance at $31,500.
The biggest loser was Conic Finance, a yield-generating protocol that lost 1,700 ether in a reentrancy exploit last week. This caused its individual TVL to plunge 65% to $42 million from $125 million. Other DeFi protocols have also experienced outflows this month, with liquid staking protocol Ankr, NFT-lending service BendDAO and Arbitrum-based decentralized exchange Chronos dealing with up to a 50% drop in TVL. Curve Finance, Blur and MakerDAO have all lost more than 15% of their respective TVL in the past month.
On the other hand, some DeFi protocols have seen success. EigenLayer has seen fresh inflows after it rolled out its restaking protocol, and Lybra Finance and Solana-based Marinade Finance have both seen strong growth with their TVL rising by 73% and 45% respectively.