TVL
Total Value Locked — the aggregate value of crypto assets deposited in a DeFi protocol or the sector as a whole.
Total Value Locked (TVL) is the primary metric used to measure the size and adoption of DeFi protocols. It represents the current USD value of all assets deposited into a protocol's smart contracts — whether in liquidity pools, lending vaults, staking contracts, or other mechanisms.
TVL is tracked by DeFiLlama across thousands of protocols and chains, making it easy to compare the relative scale of different ecosystems. A rising TVL generally signals growing user confidence; a sharp drop can indicate exploits, poor returns, or market-wide deleveraging.
TVL has limitations: it double-counts assets that are recycled through multiple protocols, it fluctuates with token prices even when the number of deposited tokens is unchanged, and it says nothing about fee revenue, active users, or protocol profitability.