DeFi DApps showed a modest recovery for the first time since May, with daily average unique active wallets (UAWs) increasing 3.7 percent month-on-month, according to a report from Dapradar.
The increase was partially driven by the Flow protocol, while Instagram grew by 577% UAW due to support for NFTs and the Solitaire Blitz game. On the other hand, the Solana UAW was down 53 percent in August from the previous month, with transactions down 68 percent, the findings show.
There were 1.67 million unique wallets connected to blockchain dapps in August, down 3.52% from the previous month, and down 14.73% from August 2021.
Source: Dapradar
Among industries, gaming accounted for more than 50% of activity usage, with 847,230 UAW per day, though down 11% and transaction volume down 12.7% month-over-month to $698 million. On the NFT side, UAW fell 16.7% to 114,542 — the lowest since June 2021, according to the report.
Despite the increase in DeFi in specific active wallets, the total DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) still showed a significant drop; from $250 billion in early 2022 to $74.21 billion in August.
“The last time TVL was this low was in April 2021, when the space started to recover. This shows that DeFi TVL has dropped by 56% or more since August 2021.”
The report pointed out that August was “especially difficult for the market due to the tornado cash crisis”, which caused the industry TVL to drop by 10.47%, resulting in a loss of $8.7 billion. In the year On August 8, the US Treasury Department accused the crypto-mixer platform of embezzling more than $7 billion, including one that was allegedly stolen by North Korean hackers.
Following the ban, the price of Tornado Cash (TORN) plummeted 45% in two days, losing nearly half of its market value.
The Ethereum chain controls 69% of DeFi TVL at $51.47 billion, according to the report – although it lost 11% last month, and is down 56.63% since August 2021. Ethereum-based Layer-2 protocols have shown signs of growth “mainly driven by the upcoming integration of Ethereum” in August with Optimism up 57.61% at a locked-in price of $1 billion, Arbitrum up 14.36%, and Polygon up 6.50% month-on-month.