DeFi is a multibillion dollar industry that is changing traditional systems with its latest use of blockchain technology. Although the DeFi market is still at an emerging stage, a few projects have emerged as having good growth potential in 2025, due to their solid metrics, user adoption, and innovative functionality. With high growth potential, these 7 DeFi projects are poised to make a significant impact in 2025
Uniswap
Uniswap continues to be among the most popular DEXs, having been one of the first with an automated market maker model for the easy swapping of tokens in a peertopeer manner. At the beginning of 2024, Uniswap’s TVL was approximately $4.8 billion, gradually increasing since early 2023. Indeed, Uniswap has more than 3.5 million unique addresses and handles daily trading volumes ranging from $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Its growth will be amplified in 2025 when the expansion of Layer2 solutions such as Arbitrum and Optimism finally makes transactions faster and cheaper. At this pace of adoption with DeFi, analysts say Uniswap can reach a potential $6 billion TVL.
Aave
Aave is one of the top liquidity providers in the DeFi lending market, offering users a platform to lend and borrow without any intermediaries. The total TVL of this protocol stands at $5.2 billion, out of which more than $1 billion of this total is from stablecoin lending alone, according to the latest data in 2024. The yearonyear annual growth of the protocol has been 20% annually, and now it boasts over 500,000 unique users across the world.
Aave just announced a multichain strategy, particularly through its Polygon and Avalanche integrations that will likely make up 40% of its user base by 2025. With an impending V4 upgrade focused on DAO governance and lower gas fees expected to boost Aave’s prospects for a $7 billion+ increase in TVL next year.
MakerDAO
MakerDAO created DAI, one of the most used decentralized stablecoins. As of 2024, DAI has a circulating supply of $5 billion, while MakerDAO’s TVL sits at $8.7 billion. MakerDAO is looking to grow its supply of DAI by 30% in 2025 via the expansion of collateral types and the possible functionality of crosschain. Some analysts believe that with a forecasted $400 billion TVL for the DeFi market in 2025, MakerDAO’s TVL would increase proportionally and reach as high as $12 billion, making it a very important player in the DeFi ecosystem with increased demand for stablecoins in the realms of lending, borrowing, and trading.
Curve Finance
Curve Finance is a DEX built for trading stablecoins and has very low slippage while having an extremely high level of liquidity. In 2024, Curve holds $3.9 billion in TVL and an average of $500 million daily trading volume. Then it also introduced the feature of liquidity incentive making its annual growth rate to 15%.
Curve’s migration to Layer2 solutions and the collaboration with protocols like Yearn Finance could continue to propel its growth into 2025. In addition, Curve has been getting higher participation from users in its DAO governance model, including more than 70% of token holders in CRV voting on any changes to the protocol.
Compound
Compound is considered one of the oldest DeFi lending protocols that support the borrowing and lending of a great variety of assets. As of the beginning of 2024, Compound’s TVL stands at $4.3 billion, with the daily volume of lending transactions on the protocol amounting to approximately $200 million. Meanwhile, user interactions with Compound have been incrementally increasing, standing at over 400,000 users.
The launch of Compound III, a streamlined version of the protocol, is expected to cut transaction fees and further improve user experience. According to a price estimate by market analysts, Compound could grow its TVL to $5.5 billion by 2025, with DeFi users continuing to look for trusted lending platforms.
Synthetix
It is unique in the DeFi space because it allows users to access synthetic assets meant for derivatives trading related to the real world. The protocol’s TVL reached $2.6 billion while already enabling more than 100 types of synthetic assets crypto, stocks, and commodities. As the derivatives market grows, so does the potential of Synthetix for big growth.
By 2025, Synthetix has in its roadmap the addition of crosschain functionality and synthetic assets for more global markets. According to analysts, Synthetix’s TVL could double from its current values to $5 billion in 2025, especially if it secures big institutional investors that are looking for DeFi exposure in traditional assets.
Yearn Finance
Yearn Finance is a yield aggregator that simplifies DeFi investments through automated optimal returns on several protocols. It currently has a TVL of $2.2 billion, where the average returns on yield farming stand at 7% to 12% annually. Its user base has grown steadily to 150,000 active users.
That said, because Yearn’s continuous optimization of yield farming pools and addition of options to crosschain farm, its TVL could increase to a value as high as $3 billion in 2025. Communitydriven development has positioned the platform as one of the most adaptive protocols. Regular updates have helped the asset mark its way through changing market trends. For the short term, its outlook is bright, considering the fad of yield farming in the DeFi markets.
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