The aggregate of assets held inside smart contracts is one of the few size figures in this market that is neither a market capitalization nor a volume. It has its own problems, chiefly that it moves with the price of the collateral, but it is a real balance and it is reported daily.
$84bn
Total value locked, 24 April 2026
−14.1%
Seven-day change
−11.3%
Thirty-day change
−9.3%
Change over one year
Source: DeFiLlama, daily series. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
Total value locked, all chains
Daily, in dollars, at that day’s marks.
Source: DeFiLlama, daily series. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
What total value locked is, and is not
The figure counts assets sitting inside smart contracts and values them at the day’s prices. Two things move it and they are easily confused. Capital arriving is one. The assets already there being repriced is the other, and in a market where the collateral is itself volatile the second usually dominates. A chain whose value locked fell twenty percent in a week where its native token fell twenty percent has not necessarily lost a single depositor.
How this was measured
- Total value locked is DeFiLlama’s daily series: the dollar value of assets held in the smart contracts of protocols deployed on each chain, priced at that day’s marks. It moves when capital arrives or leaves and also when the price of the assets already there moves, which is the single most important caveat and is the reason this column reads it against price rather than alone. Fees are protocol revenue as reported by DeFiLlama, aggregated daily. A piece dated one day uses observations through the day before, and every figure names the date it belongs to.
