A DAppTotal Report On DeFi Industry In The First Half Of 2019

Executive Summary

In this report we analyze the DeFi landscape in the first half of 2019, and provide in-detail data and analysis of DeFi applications such as Stablecoins, Lending, and DEXs. DeFi industry started to attract major attention in 2018, and becomes a much larger force in 2019, with a total locked asset value of $1.49 Billion USD as of 06/30/2019, an almost five-fold increase from $302 Million on 01/01/2019.

• Currently most stablecoins are pegged to US dollar and issued on the Ethereum blockchain. The usage of stablecoins has been growing fast in the first half of 2019, and accelerated in April as crypto prices rebounded. The daily on-chain transaction volume reached $859M on 06/30, meaning the entire circulation of stablecoins, about $5 Billion, may all change hands once in every five, six days.
• DeFi lending is still a very young sector with only two years history, but has been growing rapidly. The most borrowed assets are DAI and WETH, and the total origination (Borrows + Loans) increased from $34M in January to $544M in June, a close to 16 times growing. At the same time, the total user base is still small, monthly active user is only a few thousands, and the lending feature set is quite limited.
• DEXs are still much smaller in scale comparing with centralized exchanges. Their main value proposition is transparency and security, while speed and liquidity are their major shortcomings. For the time being they are mainly used to trade tokens not listed on centralized exchanges. The total trading volume of DEXs increased from $71M in January to $288M in June, and the two of the fastest growing DEXs are Eth2dai and Uniswap.