The 1,000 largest DeFi protocols report $303.9 billion in deposits
Lending and liquid staking hold the most, bridges drew the week’s biggest inflow, and the protocols users pay most are not the ones with the largest deposits.
The 1,000 largest DeFi protocols held $303.9 billion in total value locked on September 29, 2026, up 8.0% from 30 days earlier and down 0.9% over the past week, according to DefiLlama data compiled by BitcoinValues. The ten biggest protocols account for $124.8 billion of it, or 41.1%.
The totals exclude centralized exchanges and count protocols that run several versions, such as Aave V2, V3 and V4, once. Because the same deposit can be counted in more than one protocol, for instance ETH staked with Lido and then lent on Aave, the sum is a measure of activity rather than of unique capital. Our methodology page sets out how each figure is built.
Staking and lending still hold the most
Lido remains the largest protocol with $26.84 billion locked, ahead of Aave at $19.39 billion and SSV Network at $14.22 billion. Morpho, at $11.06 billion, is the only one of the top five whose deposits grew over the past week, by 0.7%.
By sector, lending leads with $65.15 billion across 100 tracked protocols, followed by liquid staking at $58.12 billion and bridges at $57.88 billion. Real-world asset protocols, which hold tokenized Treasury bills and credit, account for $20.60 billion; BlackRock’s BUIDL fund is the largest of them.
The past month lifted almost every large protocol. SparkLend grew 25.5% in 30 days to $9.56 billion, the fastest among the top ten, while Morpho rose 15.6% and SSV Network 15.1%. Part of those gains reflects the price of the assets deposited, not only new money: a lending market holding ETH grows when ETH rises even if nobody deposits anything.
Where the week’s money moved
The largest dollar inflow of the past seven days went to Arbitrum’s canonical bridge, which added $272.0 million (7.7%). Canonical bridges as a group were the strongest sector of the week, up 3.6% to $11.29 billion across 45 protocols.
The biggest outflow came from Steakhouse Financial, a risk curator that manages lending vaults, which lost $548.0 million or 17.6% of its deposits. Risk curators were the weakest sector overall, down 9.6% to $9.00 billion.
Deposits and revenue are different rankings
The protocols users pay most are not the ones holding the most. The 300 largest protocols collected $48.57 million in fees over the last 24 hours. PumpSwap, a Solana exchange for newly launched tokens, took $8.28 million of that on $394.1 million in deposits. Uniswap charged $4.91 million on $3.91 billion and Hyperliquid $2.56 million on $7.61 billion.
Lido, by contrast, generated $1.86 million in fees on the largest deposit base in DeFi. Annualized, that equals less than 3% of its value locked, against roughly 46% for Uniswap. Trading venues earn on turnover, while staking and lending protocols earn a thin margin on large balances.
Ethereum remains the default home for DeFi: 464 of the 1,000 tracked protocols are deployed there. The live rankings, updated several times a day, are on our DeFi rankings page, with the week’s biggest moves on the signals page.
