The cold winter of U.S. regulation seems to be quietly retreating, and a glimmer of "innovation exemption" shines into the Decentralized Finance field. On June 9, positive signals released by senior SEC officials suggest that DeFi platforms may welcome a more favorable development environment.
Written by: Frank, PANews
The winter of American regulation seems to be quietly retreating, and a ray of "innovation exemption" shines into the Decentralized Finance field. On June 9, positive signals released by SEC senior officials indicate that DeFi platforms may welcome a more favorable development environment.
However, under the blowing of this policy spring breeze, the DeFi market has presented an intriguing scene: on the one hand, TVL, the head protocol represented by Aave, has repeatedly hit new highs, and the fundamental data is strong; On the other hand, the TVL growth of many leading DeFi protocols has been sluggish, and the token price is still lower than at the beginning of the year, and the road to "value discovery" in the market still seems to be long. Although DeFi tokens have ushered in a rapid rebound in the past two days, is this behind the disturbance of short-term market sentiment or driven by deep value logic? PANews focuses on the latest developments and data performance of leading DeFi players, and analyzes the opportunities and challenges.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently sent significant positive signals about DeFi regulation. At the "DeFi and the Spirit of America" crypto roundtable on June 9, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said that the basic principles of DeFi are consistent with core values such as economic freedom and private property rights in the United States, and support the self-custody of crypto assets. He emphasized that blockchain technology enables financial transactions without intermediaries, and that the SEC should not hinder such innovation.
In addition, for the first time, Chairman Atkins revealed that staff had been instructed to study the development of an "innovation exemption" policy framework for DeFi platforms. The framework aims to "expeditiously allow entities and non-jurisdictional entities governed by the SEC to bring on-chain products and services to market." He also made it clear that developers building self-hosted or privacy-focused software should not be liable under the federal securities laws solely for publishing code, noting that the SEC's Corporate Finance Division has clarified that PoW mining and PoS staking do not in themselves constitute securities trading.
SEC's crypto task force head Hester Peirce has also expressed support, emphasizing that code publishers should not be held accountable for the use of their code by others, but also warning that centralized entities should not evade regulation by using the "decentralized" label.
Against the backdrop of SEC Republicans' push for more crypto-friendly policies, these statements were seen as a major positive for the market, triggering a spike in DeFi token prices at one point. If the "innovation exemption" is implemented, it is expected to create a more relaxed and clear regulatory environment for the development of DeFi projects in the United States.
Data Review: Weak TVL Growth, Strong Token Rebound
After the meeting released favorable regulatory news, the previously quiet DeFi tokens experienced a broad rally. In particular, leading projects such as Aave, LDO, UNI, and COMP saw significant increases of 20% to 40%. But is this merely a fleeting market spike driven by news, or is it a natural growth result of the DeFi industry? PANews has reviewed the data of the top 20 DeFi protocols over the past six months.
Overall, the TVL growth of these top DeFi protocols in the first half of 2025 is not significant, and 7 of them also saw a decline in TVL in the first half of 2025. Among the rising agreements, 5 did not increase by more than 5%, which is basically standing still. The fastest growing is BlackRock's BUIDL, which is not the same as traditional DeFi protocols and is strictly part of RWA. Among the other agreements, the most notable growth was Aave, which reached an all-time high of $26 billion in TVL and grew by more than $6 billion in the first half of the year. Sky-based Spark saw a 72.97% increase.
Although the TRON ecosystem has achieved continuous growth in stablecoins this year, the TVL data of its leading DeFi protocol JustLend has decreased by 39.82% in the first half of the year, becoming the protocol with the largest decline. In addition, popular protocols with relatively high market attention, such as Sky, Lido, EigenLayer, and Uniswap, also experienced varying degrees of decline in the first half of the year.
Token prices also seem to amplify this decline, with the token prices of the top 20 DeFi protocols averaging a maximum drawdown of 57% in the first half of 2025, and the vast majority of protocol tokens have not been able to return to the January 1, 2025 price level, even after the recent market recovery and the tokens of each protocol have rebounded sharply. Among them, only SKY's governance token MKR has increased by 44.8% compared to January 1st, and AAVE has barely returned to a similar price on January 1st. Overall, these tokens are still down 24% on average from the January 1 price.
However, the token prices of these DeFi projects have generally seen a significant rally, with a rally of around 95.59% at the average low. Among them, several tokens such as ether.fi, Sky, Aave, EigenLayer, and Pendle have all rebounded by more than 150%. In terms of movement, the recent lows of these coins were concentrated on April 7, which is similar to the trend of the crypto market. However, the rally has generally been stronger than that of other types of tokens. However, whether from the perspective of the price rebound or the overall trend in the past six months, the trend of the token price does not seem to be directly correlated with the performance of these DeFi protocols, TVL.
Aave steadily progresses, Uni upgrades, Sky transforms, EigenLayer rises again
Among these projects, some Decentralized Finance projects are worth paying special attention to.
Aave: As a leading project in the Decentralized Finance protocol, it performed impressively in the first half of the year, breaking historical highs multiple times. It has also expanded to several public chains such as Aptos and Soneium, currently supporting 18 public chains. In addition, to boost the price of AAVE tokens, the Aave community launched a proposal called "Aavenomics", which includes a weekly token buyback of $1 million and a revenue redistribution for Aave and the native stablecoin GHO. According to the proposal, 80% of the Anti-GHO rewards will be allocated to Aave stakers.
From the perspective of product interest rates and other aspects, Aave's lending rates are not considered high, but it has a stronger depth, which has also garnered the favor of many large investors. On June 10, World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, borrowed $7.5 million in USDT from Aave. Overall, in the first half of 2025, Aave has achieved an upward trend in both fundamentals (such as TVL data) and market performance, remaining a standard template for the development of DeFi protocols.
Uniswap: Uniswap officially launched version V4 in 2025, technically introducing hooks, singleton mechanisms, and more flexible custom logic while significantly reducing gas fees. In addition, the launch of Unichain further enhances Uniswap's competitiveness in the Decentralized Finance ecosystem.
Although Uniswap's TVL decreased in the first half of the year, a closer look reveals that this decline is mainly due to the drop in Ethereum prices. In terms of ETH staking volume, it has actually increased compared to January. Furthermore, after the launch of Unichain, it quickly captured a certain market share, becoming the second-ranked public chain on Uniswap in terms of TVL, with approximately 546 million dollars as of June 11.
Sky: After changing from MakerDAO to Sky in 2024, Sky has ushered in a comprehensive brand upgrade. Although Sky's TVL began to decline after the upgrade, Spark, another protocol in the ecosystem, has also shown new potential in the RWA direction, and the combined TVL volume of the two protocols will exceed $11 billion, which can rank among the top three. In addition, the price of its token, MKR, has also performed well in 2025, rising from a low of around $800 to $2,100, an increase of more than 170%. However, MakerDAO's upgrade plan "Endgame" is obviously a relatively complex reorganization, involving governance mechanisms, tokenomics and product portfolios, which also makes it difficult for the market to form a simple understanding of it, which is not conducive to the spread of the market.
EigenLayer: EigenLayer pioneered the new concept of "restaking", and since its launch, EigenLayer's TVL has exploded to $12.4 billion, and is now the third-largest DeFi protocol. Although the concept of re-staking began to die down after a period of popularity in 2024, and EigenLayer's TVL also entered a decline for a while, since April, EigenLayer's TVL data has clearly entered a new growth cycle, increasing from $7 billion to $12.4 billion in less than 2 months, an increase of 77%. Stripped of the veneer of concept, perhaps the true value of re-pledge is being redefined by the market.
Lido: As a leading project in the field of liquid staking, Lido once dominated the market with stETH, and the TVL volume once reached nearly $40 billion in 2024. However, since the second half of 2024, with the rapid growth of Ethereum L2, Lido, which is overly concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet (Ethereum mainnet accounts for more than 99%), has shown a decline, and TVL has also been declining. The token hasn't been noticeable in the recent rally, with a maximum gain of 61% from the low to June 10 well below the average of the top 20 DeFi tokens. At present, Lido's total TVL throws rank second, second only to Aave, and for Lido, the scale effect is still there. It's just that how to quickly transform to more markets may be the top priority to stay ahead of the curve.
The SEC's regulatory shift has undoubtedly injected a shot in the arm for the U.S. DeFi market. The long-standing regulatory uncertainty that has plagued projects is expected to ease, and pending innovations such as the Uniswap fee switch may actually be implemented. The trend revealed by the data is also worth pondering: although Ethereum is still the main bearer of TVL, the development momentum of DeFi has increasingly shown its independence, and even began to feed back the value of the underlying public chain, as Bitwise analyst Danny Nelson said, "The DeFi ecosystem is becoming the engine of ETH's rise". In the future, the clarification of regulation will attract more traditional financial capital to enter the DeFi space with a lower risk appetite, bringing valuable fresh blood. At the same time, the attempts of giants such as BlackRock to launch unique DeFi products not only bode well for broader convergence prospects, but also mean that the competition for the incremental market will be more intense. This "endgame" started by deregulation may be a new starting point for DeFi to mature and deeply integrate with traditional finance.
The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
SEC's "Innovative Exemption" Ignites the DeFi Engine: DeFi Leading Players' TVL and Coin Prices Showcase the Song of Ice and Fire
Written by: Frank, PANews
The winter of American regulation seems to be quietly retreating, and a ray of "innovation exemption" shines into the Decentralized Finance field. On June 9, positive signals released by SEC senior officials indicate that DeFi platforms may welcome a more favorable development environment.
However, under the blowing of this policy spring breeze, the DeFi market has presented an intriguing scene: on the one hand, TVL, the head protocol represented by Aave, has repeatedly hit new highs, and the fundamental data is strong; On the other hand, the TVL growth of many leading DeFi protocols has been sluggish, and the token price is still lower than at the beginning of the year, and the road to "value discovery" in the market still seems to be long. Although DeFi tokens have ushered in a rapid rebound in the past two days, is this behind the disturbance of short-term market sentiment or driven by deep value logic? PANews focuses on the latest developments and data performance of leading DeFi players, and analyzes the opportunities and challenges.
SEC Releases Positive Signals: DeFi Regulation Welcomes "Innovation Exemption" Framework
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently sent significant positive signals about DeFi regulation. At the "DeFi and the Spirit of America" crypto roundtable on June 9, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said that the basic principles of DeFi are consistent with core values such as economic freedom and private property rights in the United States, and support the self-custody of crypto assets. He emphasized that blockchain technology enables financial transactions without intermediaries, and that the SEC should not hinder such innovation.
In addition, for the first time, Chairman Atkins revealed that staff had been instructed to study the development of an "innovation exemption" policy framework for DeFi platforms. The framework aims to "expeditiously allow entities and non-jurisdictional entities governed by the SEC to bring on-chain products and services to market." He also made it clear that developers building self-hosted or privacy-focused software should not be liable under the federal securities laws solely for publishing code, noting that the SEC's Corporate Finance Division has clarified that PoW mining and PoS staking do not in themselves constitute securities trading.
SEC's crypto task force head Hester Peirce has also expressed support, emphasizing that code publishers should not be held accountable for the use of their code by others, but also warning that centralized entities should not evade regulation by using the "decentralized" label.
Against the backdrop of SEC Republicans' push for more crypto-friendly policies, these statements were seen as a major positive for the market, triggering a spike in DeFi token prices at one point. If the "innovation exemption" is implemented, it is expected to create a more relaxed and clear regulatory environment for the development of DeFi projects in the United States.
Data Review: Weak TVL Growth, Strong Token Rebound
After the meeting released favorable regulatory news, the previously quiet DeFi tokens experienced a broad rally. In particular, leading projects such as Aave, LDO, UNI, and COMP saw significant increases of 20% to 40%. But is this merely a fleeting market spike driven by news, or is it a natural growth result of the DeFi industry? PANews has reviewed the data of the top 20 DeFi protocols over the past six months.
Overall, the TVL growth of these top DeFi protocols in the first half of 2025 is not significant, and 7 of them also saw a decline in TVL in the first half of 2025. Among the rising agreements, 5 did not increase by more than 5%, which is basically standing still. The fastest growing is BlackRock's BUIDL, which is not the same as traditional DeFi protocols and is strictly part of RWA. Among the other agreements, the most notable growth was Aave, which reached an all-time high of $26 billion in TVL and grew by more than $6 billion in the first half of the year. Sky-based Spark saw a 72.97% increase.
Although the TRON ecosystem has achieved continuous growth in stablecoins this year, the TVL data of its leading DeFi protocol JustLend has decreased by 39.82% in the first half of the year, becoming the protocol with the largest decline. In addition, popular protocols with relatively high market attention, such as Sky, Lido, EigenLayer, and Uniswap, also experienced varying degrees of decline in the first half of the year.
Token prices also seem to amplify this decline, with the token prices of the top 20 DeFi protocols averaging a maximum drawdown of 57% in the first half of 2025, and the vast majority of protocol tokens have not been able to return to the January 1, 2025 price level, even after the recent market recovery and the tokens of each protocol have rebounded sharply. Among them, only SKY's governance token MKR has increased by 44.8% compared to January 1st, and AAVE has barely returned to a similar price on January 1st. Overall, these tokens are still down 24% on average from the January 1 price.
However, the token prices of these DeFi projects have generally seen a significant rally, with a rally of around 95.59% at the average low. Among them, several tokens such as ether.fi, Sky, Aave, EigenLayer, and Pendle have all rebounded by more than 150%. In terms of movement, the recent lows of these coins were concentrated on April 7, which is similar to the trend of the crypto market. However, the rally has generally been stronger than that of other types of tokens. However, whether from the perspective of the price rebound or the overall trend in the past six months, the trend of the token price does not seem to be directly correlated with the performance of these DeFi protocols, TVL.
Aave steadily progresses, Uni upgrades, Sky transforms, EigenLayer rises again
Among these projects, some Decentralized Finance projects are worth paying special attention to.
Aave: As a leading project in the Decentralized Finance protocol, it performed impressively in the first half of the year, breaking historical highs multiple times. It has also expanded to several public chains such as Aptos and Soneium, currently supporting 18 public chains. In addition, to boost the price of AAVE tokens, the Aave community launched a proposal called "Aavenomics", which includes a weekly token buyback of $1 million and a revenue redistribution for Aave and the native stablecoin GHO. According to the proposal, 80% of the Anti-GHO rewards will be allocated to Aave stakers.
From the perspective of product interest rates and other aspects, Aave's lending rates are not considered high, but it has a stronger depth, which has also garnered the favor of many large investors. On June 10, World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, borrowed $7.5 million in USDT from Aave. Overall, in the first half of 2025, Aave has achieved an upward trend in both fundamentals (such as TVL data) and market performance, remaining a standard template for the development of DeFi protocols.
Uniswap: Uniswap officially launched version V4 in 2025, technically introducing hooks, singleton mechanisms, and more flexible custom logic while significantly reducing gas fees. In addition, the launch of Unichain further enhances Uniswap's competitiveness in the Decentralized Finance ecosystem.
Although Uniswap's TVL decreased in the first half of the year, a closer look reveals that this decline is mainly due to the drop in Ethereum prices. In terms of ETH staking volume, it has actually increased compared to January. Furthermore, after the launch of Unichain, it quickly captured a certain market share, becoming the second-ranked public chain on Uniswap in terms of TVL, with approximately 546 million dollars as of June 11.
Sky: After changing from MakerDAO to Sky in 2024, Sky has ushered in a comprehensive brand upgrade. Although Sky's TVL began to decline after the upgrade, Spark, another protocol in the ecosystem, has also shown new potential in the RWA direction, and the combined TVL volume of the two protocols will exceed $11 billion, which can rank among the top three. In addition, the price of its token, MKR, has also performed well in 2025, rising from a low of around $800 to $2,100, an increase of more than 170%. However, MakerDAO's upgrade plan "Endgame" is obviously a relatively complex reorganization, involving governance mechanisms, tokenomics and product portfolios, which also makes it difficult for the market to form a simple understanding of it, which is not conducive to the spread of the market.
EigenLayer: EigenLayer pioneered the new concept of "restaking", and since its launch, EigenLayer's TVL has exploded to $12.4 billion, and is now the third-largest DeFi protocol. Although the concept of re-staking began to die down after a period of popularity in 2024, and EigenLayer's TVL also entered a decline for a while, since April, EigenLayer's TVL data has clearly entered a new growth cycle, increasing from $7 billion to $12.4 billion in less than 2 months, an increase of 77%. Stripped of the veneer of concept, perhaps the true value of re-pledge is being redefined by the market.
Lido: As a leading project in the field of liquid staking, Lido once dominated the market with stETH, and the TVL volume once reached nearly $40 billion in 2024. However, since the second half of 2024, with the rapid growth of Ethereum L2, Lido, which is overly concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet (Ethereum mainnet accounts for more than 99%), has shown a decline, and TVL has also been declining. The token hasn't been noticeable in the recent rally, with a maximum gain of 61% from the low to June 10 well below the average of the top 20 DeFi tokens. At present, Lido's total TVL throws rank second, second only to Aave, and for Lido, the scale effect is still there. It's just that how to quickly transform to more markets may be the top priority to stay ahead of the curve.
The SEC's regulatory shift has undoubtedly injected a shot in the arm for the U.S. DeFi market. The long-standing regulatory uncertainty that has plagued projects is expected to ease, and pending innovations such as the Uniswap fee switch may actually be implemented. The trend revealed by the data is also worth pondering: although Ethereum is still the main bearer of TVL, the development momentum of DeFi has increasingly shown its independence, and even began to feed back the value of the underlying public chain, as Bitwise analyst Danny Nelson said, "The DeFi ecosystem is becoming the engine of ETH's rise". In the future, the clarification of regulation will attract more traditional financial capital to enter the DeFi space with a lower risk appetite, bringing valuable fresh blood. At the same time, the attempts of giants such as BlackRock to launch unique DeFi products not only bode well for broader convergence prospects, but also mean that the competition for the incremental market will be more intense. This "endgame" started by deregulation may be a new starting point for DeFi to mature and deeply integrate with traditional finance.