Cardano is climbing the DeFi TVL rankings. According to DefiLlama, Cardano sits in the 16th spot of all DeFi chains with a total value locked (TVL) of $1,83.16 million. This is inclusive of the staking option, per DefiLlama data.
Cardano surpasses several chains such as Bitcoin and EOS, while ahead of Cardano in the DeFi rankings are Klaytn, Ultron, Fantom and others.
Ethereum ranks as the biggest DeFi chain with $30.92 billion in TVL, followed by Tron, which has $5.46 billion in total value locked.
Cardano-focused Twitter account ADA Whale calls attention to the rise of Cardano in the DeFi rankings.
ADA Whale unveiled his excitement as he shared a screenshot of Cardano sitting in 16th place. Based on his estimation, Cardano is $10 million from the top 15 and requires less than two times its current TVL to enter the top 10.
He notes that growth comes even though the biggest dApps are yet to launch, and the TVL is mostly denominated in ADA, which is currently down 88% from its all-time high.
Here's likely trigger
Cardano has seen steady growth in DeFi total value locked (TVL), which represents the value of assets deposited, since the start of 2023. The total value locked in ADA recently set a new high of 504 million ADA on May 14.
The year 2022 saw the Vasil upgrade, which enhances Cardano's smart contract capabilities, go live, and new dApps launch afterward.
An instance is the Djed stablecoin protocol, which was deployed on the mainnet in late January this year. Djed is now the fifth largest on Cardano in terms of DeFi TVL, which is at $13.8 million.
Before the Vasil upgrade, Cardano had few working dApps, with less than 10 contributing to its TVL. This figure has now increased to 18. February was significant for Cardano as it saw the Valentine hard fork triggered.