Ether (ETH) price has declined by 21% since Jan. 31, struggling to sustain levels above $2,800 over the past week. Investor sentiment has weakened amid this underperformance, exacerbated by a 12% decline in the total cryptocurrency market capitalization over the same period.
Bulls continue to place their hopes on Ethereum’s dominance in total value locked (TVL), especially after the metric climbed to its highest level since 2022. However, increased deposits do not necessarily indicate higher network activity or greater transaction fee generation.
Ethereum total value locked, ETH. Source: DefiLlama
TVL measures the value of assets deposited in smart contracts across various applications, including liquid staking, lending protocols, decentralized exchanges, yield farming platforms, crosschain bridges, tokenized assets, and privacy mixers. Ethereum’s TVL reached 21.8 million ETH on Feb. 11, marking its highest level since October 2022. According to DefiLlama data, this represents an 11% increase compared to the previous month.
Total value locked (TVL) market share. Source: DefiLlama
Meanwhile, smart contract deposits on the BNB Chain declined by 3% over 30 days, settling at 5.6 billion BNB (BNB). Ethereum continues to hold a dominant position, capturing 52.8% of the total DeFi market’s TVL, while Solana, the second-largest player, maintains an 8.2% share. Leading Ethereum-based applications include the liquid staking providers Lido and EigenLayer, along with the lending platform Aave, according to DefiLlama data.
Among Ethereum’s top-performing decentralized applications (DApps) over the past 30 days were yield farming protocols Royco Protocol and CIAN Protocol, followed by cross-chain liquidity platforms StakeStone and Stargate Finance. Such data reinforces the notion that Ethereum’s growth is not solely reliant on well-established DApps.
Ethereum fees dropped 72% despite rising deposits
Despite the increase in deposits, network fees have failed to keep pace. Ethereum accrued $8.1 million in transaction fees for the week ending Feb. 10, representing a sharp 72% decline compared to two weeks prior. The…
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