Key Takeaways
What’s the performance of the DeFi sector?
The DeFi sector dropped by 2% in terms of gains, while volume crashed by 16%.
Can the sector hit $1 trillion?
The sector growth in the last three months suggested potential continued growth toward the $1 trillion mark by 2030.
The decentralized finance [DeFi] sector has been among the new narratives that have gained traction. The total market cap dropped by 2%, while volume crashed by 16%, per CoinGecko.
The largest market-capped cryptos were wrapped and staked Ethereum [ETH]. Other top DeFi coins to watch were Chainlink [LINK], Hyperliquid [HYPE], Uniswap [UNI], and Aave Protocol [AAVE].
New entrants like Aster [ASTER] were also making waves, adding to the total cap.
DeFi sector performance
The market cap for DeFi was 166.37B, while ETH market cap was 534.13B. The DeFi/ETH ratio was 31.2%, which indicated a good expansion of DeFi in comparison to ETH.
The percentage of DeFi dominated the global crypto market at 3.9%. Lido’s staked Ether accounted for 22.7% of this sector.
Source: CoinGecko
The Total Value Locked (TVL) was 259.14B, and 24-hour trading volume was 9.06B. The statistics indicated a mature but slightly expanding ecosystem, having a large amount of liquidity and average market power.
This followed variations in the percentage of DeFi subsectors from late July to early October 2025.
Despite the recent hype in DEXs, it is the derivatives and stablecoin issuer coins that soared the most, with 665% and 382%, respectively. The DEX coins sector, like HYPE and ASTER, grew by 34%.
The peak yield farming growth rate was 18%, while the yield-bearing sector rose by more than 247% compared to restaking at 47%. The crypto-backed tokens jumped by 76%, while lending/borrowing saw 9%.
Source: CoinGecko
Overall, stablecoin issuers and derivative coins were the key drivers of positive market energy. They indicated good liquidity and investor interest during the recovery, but there was still some uncertainty.
Cap target by 2030 and associated risk!
Looking ahead, the sector could hit $1 trillion by 2030, which is 10 times higher than the current reading.
Despite the bullish projections, DeFi was still very vulnerable, with a total loss of over $59 billion and a non-audited loss of $4.63 billion.
The biggest decline in value was in the case of algorithmic stablecoins, which had a total of over $40B, as well as bridge and lending protocols.
Even though lending platforms bear the minor loss values, they experience the greatest number of exploits. This pointed to the flaws in the systemic weaknesses of smart contract security and governance.
Source: Sentora
The information highlighted the urgent necessity of comprehensive audits and effective risk management. This is because unaudited procedures presented investors with immense losses in an ever-growing DeFi ecosystem.