DeFi TVL Rebuilds: Where the Capital Is Actually Rotating

Headline TVL is a blunt instrument, but its direction still matters — and the direction has turned decisively up. What is more interesting is what sits underneath the aggregate number.

Three rotations at once

First, restaking has become the default home for productive ETH, stacking yield layers on top of the staking base rate. Second, tokenized treasuries and other real-world assets keep pulling in capital that used to sit in stablecoins earning nothing. Third, perp DEX volumes are eating into centralized exchange share, and their vaults are absorbing deposits accordingly.

The risk under the growth

Every yield layer is also a dependency layer. The restaking stack in particular concentrates smart-contract and slashing risk in ways the headline TVL number does not price. Growth is real — but so is the reflexivity if any layer in the stack has a bad day.

We track the TVL series above live from DefiLlama data, so this page always reflects the current state of the rebuild.