Solana's TVL jumps $555M amid good week for Ethereum rivals

This past week, the Web3 industry's total TVL went up by $1.31B, or 1.27%, to its current level of $103.86B. This marks a notable, albeit small, recovery from the $6.34B TVL loss the industry sustained the week before. Bitcoin gradually recovered to about $43,000, while Ethereum remained stagnant at $2,300 as its blockchain rivals had a better week, both in terms of price movements and TVL growth.

In this edition of the Web3 Hot Trends report, we discuss the latest trends and bright spots across Web3 ecosystems and projects.

Ecosystem TVL Growth

TVL is an essential indicator of how much capital is currently engaged in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Here are some key observations from TVL growth data we tracked this week.

1. Solana TVL grows 18.46% amid major meme coin airdrop. Solana has recently seen record growth in its new address numbers this week. This rise is likely fueled by the success of the network's meme coins, including the recently airdropped $WEN token, which is being sent to over 1 million users. Solana-based DEX aggregator Jupiter's upcoming airdrop of its $JUP governance token on January 31 could also serve as another factor for Solana's rise, highlighted by the recent $555.4M boost to its TVL.

2. As Ethereum shrinks by $338.5M, more rivals thrive. Solana is not the only Ethereum alternative that showed strong growth amid the latter's slight TVL decline, at just -0.46% despite leading all TVL losers. Behind Solana, platforms such as Tron, BSC, and Avalanche also recorded nine-figure TVL increases this week, worth $208.8M (+2.70%), $202.7M (+4.74%), and $127.5M (+11.29%), respectively.

3. Sui rises by 36.07%, overtakes Cardano and Base. Sui is now the leading Web3 ecosystem among platforms with below-$500M TVLs, after its $127.5M expansion in locked funds. Thanks to this growth, plus a new record high of $1.61 for its $SUI token and a 37.47% TVL rise two weeks ago, Sui has entered the Top 10 list of the biggest Web3 ecosystems in the world, with a bigger TVL than other established Web3 platforms such as Cardano and Base.

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Project TVL Growth

Diving deeper into the projects’ TVL growth, the 0xScope team spotted positive trends from the projects that stood out this week:

1. Magpie TVL grows 525.60% on Ethereum. Major DAO platform Magpie added $175M to its TVL on Ethereum, marking a more-than-fivefold increase, plus $36M (+52.42%) on Arbitrum and $6.2M (+27.75%) on BSC. The project recently integrated with EigenLayer to launch a SubDAO called Eigenpie, a new isolated liquid restaking platform, which allowed the DAO to cross $100M in TVL.

2. Solana projects see significant TVL increases. Amid Solana's recent TVL rise, some of its projects have seen healthy growth. Solana-based Marinade Finance increased its TVL by $233.9M (+28.01%) this week, surpassing all other projects except Maker and Aave. Also showing positive trends are Solana projects Marginfi with an additional $87.2M in TVL (+27.16%), Meteora ($6.6M, +17.15%), and Parcl ($6.6M, +16.29%).

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Weekly Project Volume

In this segment, we track which Web3 projects have seen the greatest increase in volume over the past week. This metric is an indicator of the hottest projects in terms of incoming money flow or increased usage. Here’s what stood out:

1. Uniswap volume drops by $1.27B. Leading DEX Uniswap saw $7.21B in trading volume this week, down 14.93% from the previous week. Solana-based DEX Jupiter recently surpassed Uniswap in 24-hour volume, according to CoinGecko's rankings, although Uniswap founder Hayden Adams disputed this news.

2. DODO sees 98.61% rise in volume. This DEX added $257.1M to its volume this week, leading all gainers based on project volumes and almost doubling its volume to $517.9M. DODO was recently recognized as one of the top 5 DEXes on Manta.

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Weekly Project Fee

This segment assesses which projects are raking in significant revenues from their operations. Here’s what stood out:

1. Venus grows weekly fees 37x. BSC-based lending protocol Venus earned $1.56M in fees this week, which is $1.5M more than last week, representing a growth rate of 3708.29%. The project is also planning to deploy on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and other platforms in the future.

2. All projects in the top 10, except Solana, see growth above 100%. For this week's rankings, the top-ranked projects have grown their weekly fees by more than 100%, excluding last week's topnotcher Solana, which still added $840,000 (+33.73% from last week) to its fees this week and took the No. 2 spot. Outside of Venus and Solana, the growth rates ranged from 124.28% at Benqi to as much as 304.11% for Synthetix.

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Project User Growth

Project user growth can offer insights into the adaptability and popularity of specific projects. Here’s what stood out:

1. Polygon-based chess game follows last week's 7x growth with 286.96% rise. Anichess, a Web3 gaming app created by Anomica Brands and Chess.com on Polygon, has seen its user base grow from 2,173 to 53,222 in just two weeks, representing a strong 24.5x growth.

2. Beyond Anichess, other Polygon projects see major user growth. Six of the top 10 spots in our user growth rankings are occupied by projects built on Polygon, including SushiSwap (34.45% user growth), ETHDenver (25.08%), and Wormhole (19.03%).

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Notes:

Users, as defined by 0xScope’s tools, pertain to real users behind addresses, calculated by 0xScope’s proprietary entity and bot recognition algorithm.

TVL stands for the total value locked in a project. 0xScope computes an ecosystem's TVL as the sum of the TVLs of all projects under that ecosystem. Crypto assets bridged to an ecosystem without being stored in Web3 projects do not count under that ecosystem's TVL count.

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