Decentralized finance, or DeFi, is a financial system that operates on blockchain technology, allowing for secure, peer-to-peer transactions and services like lending or trading without traditional centralized intermediaries like banks or brokers.
Written by: Anatol Antonovici | Updated September 14, 2024
Reviewed by: Mike Martin
Fact checked by: Ryan Grace
In this article, we explore the 11 best DeFi projects for 2024. We will span across numerous categories, including DEXs, staking protocols, lending protocols, and derivative protocols. Top DeFi projects include LIDO, UNI, BAL, AAVE, MKR and COMP.
🍒 tasty takeaways
- DeFi is a $80 billion market that comprises thousands of applications.
- The most popular use cases in DeFi are liquid staking, decentralized exchanges, and lending platforms.
- Popular DeFi projects include Lido, Aave, Uniswap, Maker, Curve, Balancer, and Yearn Finance.
- To invest in many of the tokens on our list, you’ll need a self-custody crypto wallet. tastycrypto offers self-custody wallets in the form of mobile apps and a browser extension 🍒
Summary
| Name | Symbol | Category | Market Cap | TVL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uniswap | UNI | DEX | $6.3b | $5.9b |
| Curve | CRV | DEX | $356.3m | $2.2b |
| Balancer | BAL | DEX | $196.8m | $1b |
| Aave | AAVE | Borrowing/Lending | $1.2b | $12.4b |
| MakerDAO | MKR | Borrowing/Lending | $2.1b | $6.1b |
| Compound | COMP | Borrowing/Lending | $433.1m | $2.4b |
| Lido | LDO | Staking | $1.7b | $33.5b |
| Synthetix | SNX | Derivatives | $712m | $462.5m |
| Stargate | STG | Cross-Chain | $108.4m | $282.3m |
| Convex Finance | CVX | Yield | $193.3m | $1.3b |
| Yearn Finance | YFI | Yield | $206m | $291m |
Click to enlarge
What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?
DeFi is an ecosystem consisting of financial services built on blockchain infrastructure. Bank of America and ING consider it to be more disruptive than Bitcoin itself.
DeFi projects, built on decentralized networks with smart contract functionality, offer community-focused financial services that enable peer-to-peer transactions. In DeFi, operations are conducted autonomously by smart contracts, removing intermediaries from the process.
Decentralized applications (dapps) aim to democratize finance, enhance financial freedom and privacy, and circumvent censorship. Most dapps issue a cryptocurrency.
Today, DeFi is a $50+ billion market, with the Ethereum blockchain dominating the space as the most widely used underlying infrastructure.
Top DeFi Chains
Source: DeFiLlama
What Can You Do in DeFi?
The DeFi space aims to transpose all kinds of financial services to trustless systems, ideally run by community-driven decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Think about trading, lending, and asset management. DeFi offers services that are not possible in traditional finance, e.g., staking and cross-chain protocols.
Here is what you can do in DeFi:
- Buy and sell tokens on decentralized exchanges (DEXs). There are decentralized marketplaces for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well.
- Borrow and lend digital assets on lending platforms like Compound and Aave.
- Earn passive income through yield farming strategies by providing liquidity on DEXs, lending protocols, and other DeFi services.
- By holding governance tokens, you can participate in the governance processes by voting for proposals.
- Stake crypto through liquid staking, which allows users to use their collateral on other dapps.
Additionally, some DeFi platforms offer services like insurance, betting, gambling, and more.
Here are the top DeFi platforms for 2024:
Secure Your DeFi Tokens With Self-Custody
When you store your crypto in a self-custody wallet, you don’t have to trust that an exchange is acting in your best interest. This is because you are the only party privy to your private key, or seed phrase.
Here are some additional benefits you get when you choose to self-custody your digital assets with tastycrypto:
- In-App Swap: Trade BTC, ETH, and 1,000+ tokens
- Generate Yield in DeFi: Stake, lend, and become your own market maker
- NFTs: Buy, sell, and view NFTs in-app
tastycrypto offers both iOS and Android self-custody wallets – download yours today! 👇
Best Decentralized Exchanges
DEXs are blockchain-based trading platforms where you can swap one token for another by simply connecting your self-custody wallet. Unlike centralized exchange platforms like Binance, DEXs don’t operate order books. Instead, they act as automated market makers (AMMs), hosting liquidity pools to trade against.
Here are the best DEXs as of today:
1. Uniswap (UNI)
Total Value-Locked Over Time – DeFiLlama
- Token: UNI
- Category: DEX
- Market cap: $3.9b
- TVL: $4.3b
Uniswap (UNI) is the largest DEX by trading volume and total value locked (TVL), with $3.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency being held in its pools. It hosts pools made of pairs of two tokens, e.g., USDC/ETH. Many pools have a stablecoin, which helps to reduce impermanent loss risk.
Liquidity providers (LPs) deposit funds into these pools and receive rewards from trading fees paid by traders.
Uniswap launched in 2018 on Ethereum, but the latest version is available on ten other chains, including Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and BNB Chain.
2. Curve (CRV)
Total Value-Locked Over Time – DeFiLlama
- Token: CRV
- Category: DEX
- Market cap: $317m
- TVL: $1.8b
Curve (CRV) is a DEX that focuses on stablecoins – tokens pegged to traditional assets like fiat currencies. It added support for Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) and Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) as well. The DEX hosts pools made of two, three, or four crypto assets.
Curve was once the largest DEX by TVL, but the recent $70 million hack led to a massive outflow.