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.
$89bn
Total value locked, 25 February 2026
−6.4%
Seven-day change
−22.9%
Thirty-day change
−13.6%
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.
Fees are the honest revenue line
Almost every valuation figure in this market derives from a token price, which is circular. Fees do not. They are payments made by users to have something executed, denominated in real assets, and reported daily. They are small in absolute terms against any traditional venue, and that smallness is itself the most useful thing about them.
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.
