DeFi

DeFi had a rough few years between the 2022 blowups, the regulatory deep-freeze under the prior SEC, and the slow grind of exploits that kept teaching everyone the same lessons. In 2026 it’s more mature and more boring, and that’s mostly a good thing. The protocols that survived (Aave, Uniswap, Curve, MakerDAO’s successors, Lido, EigenLayer) run real volumes, have actual economic models that work, and get paid in fees rather than emissions. The ones that didn’t, didn’t, and a lot of the flaky yield-farm froth is gone.

This hub tracks what’s actually happening on the chains: major protocol upgrades and governance fights, exploits and post-mortems (unfortunately still a recurring beat), liquid staking and restaking dynamics, DEX vs CEX volume comparisons, stablecoin flows, and the bigger structural questions about who runs the financial system onchain.

A few things we try to call clearly. Yield that looks unusually high almost always has a risk you’re not being told about (exotic bridge, undercollateralized lending, rehypothecation). “Decentralized” is a spectrum, and most DeFi protocols have a multisig somewhere that could do a lot of damage if it wanted to, we note who holds the keys when it matters. Real TVL growth and mercenary-capital TVL growth look identical in a chart and very different under the hood.

For sector-level live data: DeFi sector page, Lending, DEX, Liquid Staking, and Restaking all aggregate live stats. Major DeFi tokens have detail pages too: Aave, Uniswap, Chainlink.

Latest DeFi coverage below, newest first.