Capital on chain is concentrated, and the concentration is the durable fact about this market rather than a stage it is passing through. One chain holds most of it, and the challengers have been challengers for several years.
| Chain | Value locked | Share | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | $44.8bn | 63.2% | the settlement layer most institutional custody supports |
| Solana | $5.5bn | 7.8% | a single high-throughput chain with no rollup layer |
| BSC | $5.5bn | 7.8% | an exchange-affiliated chain |
| Tron | $5.1bn | 7.2% | used predominantly for dollar transfer rather than lending |
| Base | $4.4bn | 6.2% | Coinbase’s rollup, settling to Ethereum |
| Arbitrum | $1.7bn | 2.4% | a rollup settling to Ethereum |
| Hyperliquid | $1.4bn | 2.0% | an execution venue built around a derivatives order book |
| Polygon | $1.3bn | 1.8% | a rollup and sidechain family settling to Ethereum |
Value locked on Ethereum
Daily, in dollars, at that day’s marks.
Source: DeFiLlama, daily series. Computed by Institutional Asset Journal.
Why the chain matters to an allocator
An execution environment is a counterparty set. It determines who validates a transaction, how final settlement becomes and when, which custodians will support the asset, and whether there is anybody to call when something fails. Those are the same questions asked of a clearing house. The answers differ sharply between chains and they are rarely in the marketing.
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.
