With the Bitcoin (BTC) rally hitting the pause button, the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry has finally reached its boom.
Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI) are getting closer to the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap on CoinMarketCap, gaining 18.59 percent and 9.36 percent, respectively, in the last 24 hours.
Two popular DeFi tokens were able to outpace EOS, which was in the process of recovery after Dan Larimer suddenly left Block.one earlier this month. They have also surpassed leading cryptocurrencies such as Tezos (XTZ), Monero (XMR), and Tron (TRX).
The tokens distributed by the automated market maker Uniswap during the surprise airdrop in September are now close to $ 10, and if they were hodled, they have now earned nearly $ 4000.
A $ 25 Billion Market
The growth of the DeFi industry has occurred over the past year. In late January 2020, the total value locked down in various decentralized finance protocols was just under $ 1 billion. According to data provided by DeFiPulse, this figure is now well over $ 25 billion.
The Ethereum-based lending protocol MakerDAO holds the DeFi crown with $ 4.5 billion locked, but many competitors are pretty close to it. Aave, Compound and Uniswap have left behind $ 3 billion.
What's the case with the Chainlink?
Chainlink (LINK), the token behind the decentralized oracle middleware, is also one of the most popular cryptocurrencies right now. Chainlink reached its all-time high on January 15th for the first time since August 2020. Bitcoin's weakness didn't stop LINK from going higher, and the oracle token reached another $ 25.5 ATH on January 23.
One of the possible catalysts behind these explosive moves could be Grayscale's announcement of the LINK fund.
