Fantom Becomes Third-Largest DeFi Protocol by Value Locked
The value locked on DeFi-centric projects built on Fantom surged 52% in the past week.
![(Shutterstock)](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/VxpLlfN7436izS63PIo_z4MJJlQ=/567x378/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/TENXXSRGTNB5VIKNGZGRE3LLHI.jpg)
Fantom overtook Binance Smart Chain (BSC) over the weekend to become the third-largest decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem by total value locked, data from analytics tool DeFiLlama showed.
DeFi broadly refers to smart contract-based financial services such as trading, lending and borrowing offered by blockchain projects to users.
As of Monday morning in Europe, more than $12.2 billion worth of Fantom’s FTM and other tokens were locked on 129 protocols geared toward Fantom users. That's just over $94 million locked per project on average, and it's a 52% increase in the past week and a greater than 170% increase over the past month, the data showed.
Cross-chain swap Multichain is the biggest protocol by value locked on Fantom, with over $6.97 billion worth of assets in its smart contracts. In second place is the relatively new 0xDAO, which locks over $3.91 billion, while decentralized exchange SpookySwap takes third place with just over $1 billion in locked value.
![Multichain is the biggest project on Fantom by value locked. (DeFiLlama)](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/PG4mqnXCONaf5Fo4Hj2V6tV32EY=/560x262/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/IEZLMJU2KNGU5LF72XKHL6TCHI.png)
BSC slipped to the fourth-largest DeFi ecosystem with $11.96 billion in locked value over 294 projects. Terra, which displaced BSC in December to become the second-largest DeFi ecosystem, retains second place with $16.54 billion in locked value. Ethereum retains the DeFi crown with over $116 billion in locked value over 415 projects, more than any other blockchain.
![Ethereum remains the top DeFi protocol by value locked. (DeFiLlama)](https://www.coindesk.com/resizer/sKALZt0LeCTADC-0LVGDpA0o_64=/560x254/filters:quality(80):format(jpg)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/I7ART66Y25HZ5GLYXQUHAJQHRU.png)
Tokens of Fantom have emerged as the top performers in recent months as investors bet on the tokens of layer 1 projects – protocols with their native blockchains, such as Fantom or Solana – as an alternate to Ethereum.
FTM prices rose from $1.30 in mid-December to approach all-time highs of $3.46 earlier this month, before tumbling with the broader market in the past week.