Written by: Frank, PANews
The winter of U.S. regulation seems to be quietly receding, and a ray of “innovation exemption” light has shone into the DeFi field. On June 9, positive signals released by senior SEC officials indicate that DeFi platforms may usher in a more favorable development environment.
However, under the influence of this favorable policy, the DeFi market presents a thought-provoking scene: on one hand, the leading protocol represented by Aave has seen its TVL reach new highs, with strong fundamental data; on the other hand, the TVL of several major DeFi protocols has shown weak growth, and the token prices are still below the beginning of the year, indicating that the market’s “value discovery” process still seems long. Although DeFi tokens have experienced a rapid rebound in the past two days, is this driven by short-term market sentiment fluctuations, or by deeper value logic? PANews focuses on the latest dynamics and data performance of leading DeFi players, analyzing the opportunities and challenges within.
SEC Releases Positive Signal: DeFi Regulation Welcomes ‘Innovation Exemption’ Framework
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently released significant positive signals regarding DeFi regulation. At the “DeFi and the American Spirit” crypto roundtable held on June 9, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stated that the fundamental principles of DeFi align with core values such as economic freedom and private property rights in the U.S., and he supports the self-custody of crypto assets. He emphasized that blockchain technology enables financial transactions without intermediaries, and the SEC should not obstruct such innovations.
In addition, Chairman Atkins revealed for the first time that he has instructed staff to research and develop a policy framework for an “innovation exemption” targeted at DeFi platforms. The framework aims to “quickly allow entities under SEC jurisdiction and non-jurisdictional entities to bring on-chain products and services to market.” He also clarified that developers of self-custody or privacy-focused software should not bear liability under federal securities laws simply for releasing code, and mentioned that the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance has clarified that PoW mining and PoS staking do not, in themselves, constitute securities transactions.
SEC’s cryptocurrency task force leader Commissioner Hester Peirce also expressed support, emphasizing that the code publisher should not be held responsible for the use of the code by others, but also warned that centralized entities should not evade regulation by using the “decentralized” label.
Against the backdrop of SEC Republican commissioners pushing for more crypto-friendly policies, these statements are seen by the market as a significant positive, leading to a surge in DeFi token prices. If the “innovation exemption” is implemented, it is expected to create a more relaxed and clear regulatory environment for the development of DeFi projects in the United States.
Data Review: TVL Growth Weak, Token Rebound Strong
After the conference released favorable regulatory news, the previously quiet DeFi tokens experienced a widespread rally. Notably, leading projects such as Aave, LDO, UNI, and COMP saw significant increases of 20% to 40%. But is this merely a fleeting market reaction driven by news, or is it a natural growth result of the DeFi industry? PANews conducted a review of the data from the top 20 DeFi protocols over the past six months.
Overall, the growth of TVL for these leading DeFi protocols in the first half of 2025 is not significant, with 7 protocols experiencing a decline in TVL during this period. Among those that did see an increase, 5 had growth of no more than 5%, essentially remaining stagnant. The fastest-growing protocol is BUIDL, launched by BlackRock, which differs from traditional DeFi protocols and strictly falls under the category of RWA. Among the other protocols, Aave saw a notable increase, with TVL surpassing 26 billion USD, reaching an all-time high, and growing by over 6 billion USD in the first half of the year. The Spark of the Sky series experienced a growth of 72.97%.
Although the TRON ecosystem has achieved sustained growth in stablecoins this year, the TVL data of its leading DeFi protocol JustLend dropped by 39.82% in the first half of the year, becoming the protocol with the largest decline. Additionally, popular protocols with relatively high market attention, such as Sky, Lido, EigenLayer, and Uniswap, also experienced varying degrees of decline in the first half of the year.
The token prices also seem to amplify this downward trend, with the average maximum drawdown of the top 20 DeFi protocols’ token prices reaching 57% in the first half of 2025. Even with the recent market recovery, where various protocols’ tokens have rebounded significantly, the vast majority of protocol tokens have still not returned to the price levels of January 1, 2025. Among them, only SKY’s governance token MKR has increased by 44.8% compared to January 1, while AAVE has only barely returned to a similar price as on January 1. Overall, these tokens are still down an average of 24% compared to their prices on January 1.
However, the token prices of these DeFi projects have generally rebounded significantly, with an average rebound of about 95.59% from the lows. Among them, several tokens such as ether.fi, Sky, Aave, EigenLayer, and Pendle have seen rebound rates exceeding 150%. From the trend perspective, the recent lows of these tokens are concentrated around April 7, which is similar to the movements in the crypto market. However, the strength of the rebound is generally better than that of other types of tokens. Nevertheless, whether from the perspective of price rebounds or the overall trend over the past six months, the price movements of the tokens seem to have no direct correlation with the performance of these DeFi protocols’ TVL.
Aave steadily advances, Uni upgrades, Sky transforms, EigenLayer rises again
Among these projects, some DeFi projects are worth paying special attention to.
Aave: As a leading DeFi protocol project, it performed well in the first half of the year, breaking through record highs many times. It has expanded multiple public chains such as Aptos and Soneium, and currently supports 18 public chains. In addition, in order to boost the price of AAVE tokens, the Aave community launched a proposal called “Aavenomics”, which includes a weekly $1 million token buyback and revenue redistribution between Aave and the native stablecoin GHO, according to which 80% of the Anti-GHO rewards will be distributed to Aave stakers.
From the perspective of product interest rates and other aspects, Aave’s lending rates are not high, but it has stronger liquidity, which has made it favored by many large investors. On June 10, World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, borrowed $7.5 million worth of USDT from Aave. Overall, in the first half of 2025, Aave has shown an upward trend in fundamentals (such as TVL data) and market performance, remaining a standard template for the development of DeFi protocols.
Uniswap: Uniswap officially launched version V4 in 2025, technically introducing hooks, singleton mechanism, and more flexible custom logic, significantly reducing Gas fees. In addition, the launch of Unichain further enhances Uniswap’s competitiveness in the DeFi ecosystem.
Although Uniswap’s TVL declined in the first half of the year, a closer look reveals that this decline is primarily due to the drop in Ethereum prices. In terms of ETH staking volume, it has actually increased compared to January. In addition, after the launch of Unichain, it quickly captured a certain market share and has become the second-ranked public chain in terms of TVL on Uniswap, with a TVL of approximately 546 million USD as of June 11.
Sky: Starting from 2024, after being renamed from MakerDAO to Sky, Sky has embarked on a comprehensive brand upgrade journey. Although after the upgrade, Sky’s TVL began to decline, another protocol within the ecosystem, Spark, has also demonstrated new potential in the RWA direction. The combined TVL of these two protocols is expected to exceed 11 billion USD, placing it among the top three levels. Additionally, the price of its token MKR performed impressively in 2025, rising from a low of around 800 USD to 2100 USD, an increase of over 170%. However, MakerDAO’s upgrade plan “The Endgame” is evidently a relatively complex reorganization that involves governance mechanisms, token economics, and product portfolios, making it difficult for the market to form a simple understanding, which is not conducive to market dissemination.
EigenLayer: EigenLayer has pioneered the new concept of “restaking”. Since its launch, EigenLayer’s TVL has experienced explosive growth, reaching $12.4 billion, making it the third-ranked DeFi protocol. Although the concept of restaking started to fade after a brief surge in 2024, EigenLayer’s TVL also saw a decline for a time. However, since April, EigenLayer’s TVL data has clearly entered a new growth cycle, increasing from $7 billion to $12.4 billion in less than two months, a growth rate of 77%. Shedding the concept’s veneer, perhaps the true value of restaking is being redefined by the market.
Lido: As a leading project in the field of liquid staking, Lido once dominated the market with stETH, and the TVL volume once reached nearly $40 billion in 2024. However, since the second half of 2024, with the rapid growth of Ethereum L2, Lido, which is overly concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet (Ethereum mainnet accounts for more than 99%), has shown a decline, and TVL has also been declining. The token hasn’t been noticeable in the recent rally, with a maximum gain of 61% from the low to June 10 well below the average of the top 20 DeFi tokens. At present, Lido’s total TVL throws rank second, second only to Aave, and for Lido, the scale effect is still there. It’s just that how to quickly transform to more markets may be the top priority to stay ahead of the curve.
The SEC’s regulatory shift undoubtedly injects a shot of adrenaline into the US DeFi market. The long-standing regulatory uncertainty that has plagued project teams is expected to ease, and innovations like the Uniswap fee switch may finally be realized. The trends revealed by the data are also worth pondering: although Ethereum remains the main bearer of TVL, the development momentum of DeFi has increasingly shown its independence, even beginning to feed back into the value of underlying public chains. As Bitwise analyst Danny Nelson stated, “The DeFi ecosystem is becoming the engine for ETH’s rise.” In the future, the clarification of regulations will attract more traditional financial capital to enter the DeFi space with a lower risk appetite, bringing valuable fresh blood; at the same time, attempts by giants like BlackRock to launch unique DeFi products not only signal a broader prospect for integration but also mean that competition for incremental markets will become fiercer. This “final battle” initiated by regulatory loosening may very well be a new starting point for DeFi to mature and deeply integrate with traditional finance.
