SEC's "Innovation Exemption" Ignites the DeFi Engine: The Top Players in DeFi Experience a Song of Ice and Fire with TVL and Coin Prices

Author: Frank, PANews

The winter of U.S. regulation seems to be quietly receding, with a glimmer of "innovation exemption" shining into the DeFi space. On June 9, positive signals released by senior SEC officials indicated that DeFi platforms may welcome a more favorable development environment.

However, under the breeze of this policy spring, the internal landscape of the DeFi market presents a thought-provoking scene: on one hand, leading protocols like Aave have repeatedly set new highs in TVL, with strong fundamental data; on the other hand, many top DeFi protocols are experiencing sluggish TVL growth, and token prices are still below the beginning of the year, suggesting that the market's "value discovery" journey remains long. Although DeFi tokens have seen a rapid rebound in the past two days, is this merely a disturbance of short-term market sentiment, or is it driven by deeper value logic? PANews focuses on the latest dynamics and data performance of leading DeFi players, analyzing the opportunities and challenges within.

SEC Releases Positive Signals: DeFi Regulation Welcomes "Innovation Exemption" Framework

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently released significant positive signals regarding DeFi regulation. At the "DeFi and the American Spirit" crypto roundtable held on June 9, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins stated that the fundamental principles of DeFi align with core values such as economic freedom and private property rights in the U.S., and he supports the self-custody of crypto assets. He emphasized that blockchain technology enables financial transactions without intermediaries, and the SEC should not obstruct such innovations.

Additionally, Chairman Atkins revealed for the first time that he has instructed staff to research and develop a policy framework for "innovation exemption" for DeFi platforms. This framework aims to "quickly allow entities under SEC jurisdiction and non-jurisdictional entities to bring on-chain products and services to market." He also clarified that developers building self-custody or privacy-focused software should not bear liability under federal securities laws merely for releasing code, and mentioned that the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance has clarified that PoW mining and PoS staking do not, in themselves, constitute securities transactions.

SEC crypto task force leader Commissioner Hester Peirce also expressed support, emphasizing that code publishers should not be held liable due to others' use of their code, but warned that centralized entities should not evade regulation by using the "decentralized" label.

Against the backdrop of Republican SEC commissioners pushing for friendlier crypto policies, these statements have been viewed by the market as a significant positive, leading to a surge in DeFi token prices. If the "innovation exemption" is implemented, it is expected to create a more relaxed and clear regulatory environment for the development of U.S. DeFi projects.

Data Review: TVL Growth Sluggish, Token Rebound Strong

Following the release of regulatory good news from the meeting, the previously quiet DeFi tokens experienced a broad rally. Notably, leading projects such as Aave, LDO, UNI, and COMP saw significant increases of 20% to 40%. But is this merely a fleeting market reaction driven by news, or a natural growth result of the DeFi industry? PANews reviewed the data of the top 20 DeFi protocols over the past six months.

Overall, the TVL growth of these leading DeFi protocols in the first half of 2025 was not significant, with seven protocols experiencing a decline in TVL during this period. Among those that did increase, five saw growth of no more than 5%, essentially remaining stagnant. The fastest-growing was BUIDL, launched by BlackRock, which is not a traditional DeFi protocol but strictly falls under the category of RWA. Among other protocols, Aave showed notable growth, with its TVL surpassing $26 billion, reaching a historical high, and growing by over $6 billion in the first half of the year. The Spark protocol from the Sky ecosystem saw a 72.97% increase.

Although the Tron ecosystem has seen continuous growth in stablecoins this year, its leading DeFi protocol JustLend experienced a 39.82% decline in TVL in the first half of the year, becoming the protocol with the largest drop. Additionally, popular protocols like Sky, Lido, EigenLayer, and Uniswap also saw varying degrees of decline in the first half of the year.

Token prices seem to amplify this downward trend, with the average maximum drawdown of the top 20 DeFi protocols' token prices reaching 57% in the first half of 2025. Even with the recent market recovery and significant rebounds in various protocols' tokens, the vast majority of protocol tokens have not returned to their price levels from January 1, 2025. Among them, only SKY's governance token MKR has risen by 44.8% compared to January 1, while AAVE has barely returned to a similar price level. Overall, these tokens have averaged a 24% decline compared to their prices on January 1.

However, the tokens of these DeFi projects have generally seen substantial rebounds, with an average rebound increase of about 95.59% from their lows. Tokens such as ether.fi, Sky, Aave, EigenLayer, and Pendle have all rebounded by over 150%. From a trend perspective, the recent lows of these tokens were concentrated around April 7, mirroring the movements of the crypto market. However, the strength of the rebounds has generally outperformed other types of tokens. Nevertheless, whether viewed from the perspective of price rebounds or the overall trend over the past six months, the price movements of these tokens do not seem to have a direct correlation with the performance of the TVL of these DeFi protocols.

Aave Steady, Uni Upgrades, Sky Transforms, EigenLayer Rises Again

Among these projects, some DeFi projects deserve special attention.

Aave: As the leading DeFi protocol, Aave's data performance in the first half of the year was impressive, repeatedly breaking historical highs. It has expanded to multiple public chains, including Aptos and Soneium, currently supporting 18 public chains. Additionally, to boost the price of AAVE tokens, the Aave community has proposed a plan called "Aavenomics," which includes a weekly $1 million token buyback and a revenue redistribution plan for Aave and the native stablecoin GHO. According to the proposal, 80% of the Anti-GHO rewards will be allocated to Aave stakers.

In terms of product interest rates, Aave's borrowing rates are not high, but it has a stronger depth, making it favored by many large holders. On June 10, World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, borrowed $7.5 million worth of USDT from Aave. Overall, in the first half of 2025, Aave has achieved an upward trend in both fundamentals (TVL and other data) and market performance, remaining the standard template for the development of DeFi protocols.

Uniswap: Uniswap officially launched its V4 version in 2025, introducing more flexible custom logic such as hooks and singleton mechanisms, significantly reducing gas fees. Additionally, the launch of Unichain further enhances Uniswap's competitiveness in the DeFi ecosystem.

Although Uniswap's TVL saw a decline in the first half of the year, a closer look reveals that this decline was primarily due to the drop in Ethereum prices. From the perspective 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 in terms of TVL on Uniswap, with a TVL of approximately $546 million as of June 11.

Sky: Since transitioning from MakerDAO to Sky in 2024, Sky has undergone a comprehensive brand upgrade. Although Sky's TVL began to decline after the upgrade, another protocol within the ecosystem, Spark, has shown new potential in the RWA direction. The combined TVL of these two protocols exceeds $11 billion, placing them among the top three. Additionally, the price of its token MKR has performed well in 2025, rising from a low of around $800 to $2,100, an increase of over 170%. However, MakerDAO's upgrade plan, "Final Battle," is evidently a relatively complex restructuring involving governance mechanisms, token economics, and product portfolios, making it difficult for the market to form a simple understanding, which is not conducive to market dissemination.

EigenLayer: EigenLayer has pioneered the concept of "restaking," and since its launch, its TVL has experienced explosive growth, reaching $12.4 billion, making it the third-ranked DeFi protocol. Although the concept of restaking began to cool off after a brief period of popularity in 2024, EigenLayer's TVL has clearly entered a new growth cycle since April, increasing from $7 billion to $12.4 billion in less than two months, a growth rate of 77%. Shedding the concept's superficiality, the true value of restaking may be redefined by the market.

Lido: As a leading project in the liquid staking field, Lido once dominated the market with stETH, with its TVL reaching 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 (over 99% of its TVL), has shown signs of decline, and its TVL has continued to drop. Its token has also not rebounded significantly in the recent surge, with a maximum increase of 61% from its low, far below the average of the top 20 DeFi tokens. Currently, Lido's total TVL still ranks second, only behind Aave, indicating that scale effects remain. However, how to quickly transform to adapt to more markets may be the primary task to maintain its leading position.

The SEC's regulatory shift undoubtedly injects a shot of adrenaline into the U.S. DeFi market. The long-standing regulatory uncertainty troubling project teams is expected to ease, and unresolved innovations like Uniswap's fee switch may finally be realized. The trends revealed by the data are also thought-provoking: although Ethereum remains the primary carrier of TVL, the development momentum of DeFi is increasingly showing its independence, even beginning to feed back into the value of underlying public chains. As Bitwise analyst Danny Nelson stated, "The DeFi ecosystem is becoming the engine for ETH's rise." In the future, the clarification of regulations will attract more traditional financial capital to enter the DeFi space with lower risk appetites, bringing valuable new blood; at the same time, attempts by giants like BlackRock to launch unique DeFi products not only indicate broader integration prospects but also mean that competition for incremental markets will become more intense. This "Final Battle" initiated by regulatory easing may be a new starting point for DeFi to mature and deeply integrate with traditional finance.