Over 90% Decline in Several DeFi Chains Since the Previous Cycle

Several decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchains have faced significant losses, with some projects experiencing over a 90% drop in total value locked (TVL) since the last crypto market cycle. North Korean hacker groups, such as Lazarus, and a series of failures in on-chain projects have led to massive outflows of user assets, leaving multiple DeFi chains in a precarious position.

According to data from DefiLlama, several DeFi chains have seen their TVL diminish by around 90%, particularly since the last crypto bull run. On-chain analyst 0xThoor highlighted Harmony, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchain, as one of the most significant drop-offs in terms of DeFi TVL.

Harmony launched its layer-1 mainnet in 2019, two years before the previous market peak in 2021. By January 2022, Harmony reached its all-time high, with TVL surpassing $1.4 billion. However, just six months later, in June 2022, the Harmony Horizon bridge was hacked by the North Korean Lazarus group, which stole $100 million in one of the largest DeFi hacks to date. From that point on, Harmony’s TVL experienced a steady decline. As of the latest data, the protocol’s TVL has fallen to just $1.7 million, a staggering 99% drop from its peak.

Other DeFi projects, including Aurora, Moonrise, Canto, and Evmos, have also seen their TVLs drop by at least 90%. Even Polygon, a popular Ethereum-based scaling solution, has suffered a 92% loss in its TVL, going from $9.9 billion in 2021 to just $700 million in early 2025. Analyst 0xThoor tweeted on February 10 that many more projects’ TVL charts will likely follow this downward trend in the coming years.

Despite the challenges, the total DeFi TVL currently stands at over $106 billion, down from $175 billion in 2025. Even though some major protocols have collapsed, new projects like Coinbase-incubated Base and the growing operability of Bitcoin within DeFi may help drive adoption and push the on-chain ecosystem to new heights.