DeFi Tokens Are April's Biggest Losers as Revenues Fall; Memecoins Outperform
April saw bearish sentiment despite being a historically favorable month for cryptocurrencies.
Considering bitcoin’s (BTC) 17% loss as a benchmark, the broader DeFi sector lost 34% on average, closely followed by tokens of layer 1, or base blockchains, at 33%. DeFi relies on smart contracts instead of third parties to provide financial services, such as trading, lending and borrowing, to users.
DeFi tokens have been the biggest losers on a yearly basis with over 71% in average drawdowns for investors. Ether (ETH), the native token of Ethereum over which most DeFi protocols are built, gained 3% in comparison.
DeFi projects also saw a drop in revenues, which are earned each time a user conducts financial activity on the protocol with the protocol receiving a small cut of volumes as fees. The drop likely occurred as token prices fell and interest among investors took a hit.
Financial services platform SushiSwap saw a 29% drop in revenue, while those on DeFi exchange Balancer fell as much as 66%. Their corresponding tokens, SUSHI and BAL, have lost 45% and 18% over the past month, respectively, CoinGecko data shows.
Memecoins and exchange tokens were the relative outperformers among crypto sectors. Memecoins lost an average of 19%, while exchange tokens – such as OKX’s OKB and FTX’s FTT – lost just 13% on average. Privacy tokens also outperformed with 16% in gains, buoyed by the likes of Monero (XMR) and Zcash (ZEC).
Meanwhile, trading activity in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) increased in April compared to prior months, even as the number of users remained the same. Average daily volumes bumped 40%, while the average transaction amount increased by the same percentage as well.
Popular Ethereum-based NFT collection CryptoPunks lost favor among investors, slipping to the third spot by market capitalization as the Mutant Ape Yacht Club jumped to second place with a $2 billion capitalization.