Assets managed by Liqwid Finance, a Cardano-based protocol, up 80% in April

The total value locked (TVL) in Liqwid Finance is up 80% in April, an update on April 30 shows. 

Liqwid Finance is a non-custodial money market allowing users to borrow and lend digital assets without an intermediary.

Liqwid Finance’s TVL rises 80% in April

According to DeFiLlama, an analytics platform, Liqwid Finance manages $15.5 million in assets, an 80% increment from March 2023 and a tidy 12% expansion in the past week. 

The protocol is now one of the fastest growing dapp in the Cardano ecosystem, only trailing Minswap, a decentralized exchange (DEX); Indigo, a lending and borrowing protocol; and WingRiders, a swapping platform. 

Liqwid Finance has a higher TVL than Djed, the Cardano-based algorithmic stablecoin, and SundaeSwap, a DEX.

The sharp expansion of Djed Finance’s TVL coincides with the overwhelming rejection of an improvement proposal that would have seen the platform adjust its liquidation parameters in each market. 

Specifically, the goal would have seen the increment of the liquidation bonus for several markets, affecting ADA, DJED, and SHEN, a token associated with the Djed stablecoin. The liquidation bonus would have been increased from 10% to 30% for the ADA and DJED markets. 

DeFi activity recovering

Overall, DeFi protocols in Cardano, a smart contracting platform similar to Ethereum, cumulatively manage slightly over $155 million in various assets. 

While Cardano’s DeFi TVL is relatively lower than in Ethereum, assets under management have more than tripled from around $50 million in early January to spot rates. However, at spot rates, the blockchain only manages half of what it had locked in March 2022 when all DeFi protocols in Cardano managed over $320 million of assets. 

The expansion of Cardano TVL coincides with rallying ADA prices. In the past four months, the coin has rallied 66% after bottoming up from $0.24 in December 2022. With crypto bulls recovering, DeFi activity was revived following the sharp contraction throughout the crypto winter of 2022 when asset prices plunged. To illustrate, Cardano (ADA) prices fell over 90% from August 2021 peaks when the coin had rallied to $3.

As of April 30, the DeFi TVL is $49 billion, with Ethereum-based protocols managing more assets. Lido Finance, a liquidity staking protocol, is the largest DeFi protocol managing $12 billion worth of assets, ahead of MakerDAO, another decentralized money market; that manages $7.4 billion of various tokens.