Among the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols built on the Cardano blockchain, Dano Finance leads with a TVL of $14.15 million. It is followed by Minswap with $13.18 million, and in third place is Liqwid with $12.36 million. Other participating projects in the Cardano ecosystem include WingRiders, Indigo, Slash Protocol, and Surf Lending.
Cardano lags significantly behind blockchains that utilize smart contracts. For comparison, the total value locked (TVL) in the Ethereum network currently reaches $41.32 billion, while in the Solana blockchain, it's $4.78 billion.
Amid Cardano's relatively weak TVL performance, its founder Charles Hoskinson stated that his ecosystem can expand without competing with other blockchains. He expects the Cardano PRIME initiative by the AlphaGrowth project to increase Cardano's TVL to $290 million within a year. To achieve this, AlphaGrowth has requested funding of 120 million $ADA from the Cardano treasury, with a fixed fee of 11 million $ADA and up to 29 million $ADA in bonuses — contingent on TVL growth.
Hoskinson hopes that Cardano's TVL can be boosted by RealFi, which aims to transition traditional financial applications to the blockchain, as well as by Pogun — a bridge for Bitcoin into the Cardano ecosystem. BTC holders are encouraged to use their coins in decentralized applications based on Cardano.
In July, Cardano developers successfully activated the Van Rossum hard fork on the mainnet. This update is designed to reduce the execution costs of Plutus smart contracts and prepare the blockchain for future improvements.
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