The DeFi Industry Welcomes New Dawn: Analysis of Regulatory Easing and Market Performance

Recently, the regulatory environment in the United States seems to show signs of warming, bringing a glimmer of hope to the DeFi sector. On June 9, positive signals released by regulatory officials indicate that DeFi platforms may welcome a more favorable development environment.

However, against the backdrop of favorable policies, the DeFi market presents a complex situation: on one hand, the TVL of some leading protocols continues to reach new highs, with strong fundamental data performance; on the other hand, the TVL growth of many leading DeFi protocols is slow, and token prices remain below the levels at the beginning of the year, indicating that the market's value discovery process is ongoing. Although DeFi tokens have recently experienced a rapid rebound, is this driven by short-term market sentiment fluctuations or deep value logic? Let's focus on the latest dynamics and data performance of leading DeFi projects to analyze the opportunities and challenges within.

Regulatory Attitude Shift: DeFi May Welcome "Innovation Exemption" Framework

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

In addition, the chairman revealed for the first time that he has instructed staff to study and formulate an "innovation exemption" policy framework 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 of self-custody or privacy-focused software should not bear liability under federal securities law solely 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.

The head of the SEC's cryptocurrency task force also expressed support, emphasizing that code publishers should not be held responsible for how others use the code, but also warned that centralized entities should not evade regulation by using the "decentralized" label.

Against the backdrop of SEC Republican commissioners pushing for more crypto-friendly policies, these statements were seen as a significant positive by the market, temporarily triggering 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 DeFi projects in the U.S.

Market Data Analysis: Weak TVL Growth, Strong Token Rebound

After the positive news regarding regulation was announced, the long-silent DeFi tokens experienced a widespread rally. The prices of tokens from several leading projects generally saw a significant increase of 20%-40%. But is this merely a temporary phenomenon driven by news in the market, or is it a result of the natural growth of the DeFi industry? Let's analyze the data from 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 is not significant, with 7 protocols even experiencing a decline in TVL. Among the protocols that did grow, 5 had increases of no more than 5%, essentially remaining stagnant. The fastest growth was seen in an RWA-type protocol, which differs from traditional DeFi protocols. Among other protocols, a prominent lending platform showed notable growth, with its TVL surpassing $26 billion, reaching a historic high, and growing by over $6 billion in the first half of the year. Another lending protocol saw a growth of 72.97%.

Although the ecology of a certain public chain has achieved continuous growth in stablecoins this year, the TVL data of its leading DeFi protocols decreased by 39.82% in the first half of the year, becoming the protocol with the largest decline. In addition, some popular protocols that received high market attention also experienced varying degrees of decline in the first half of the year.

The prices of tokens seem to amplify this downward trend, with the average maximum drawdown of the top 20 DeFi protocol tokens reaching 57% in the first half of 2025. Even with the recent market recovery and significant rebounds in the prices of various protocol tokens, the vast majority of protocol tokens have still not returned to the price levels of January 1, 2025. Among them, only one governance token has increased by 44.8% compared to January 1, while another has barely returned to a similar price as of January 1. Overall, these tokens are still down an average of 24% compared to their prices on January 1.

However, the token prices of these DeFi projects have generally rebounded significantly, with an average rebound increase of about 95.59% from the lowest point. Some tokens have rebounded by more than 150%. From the trend, the recent low points of these tokens are concentrated around April 7, similar to the overall trend of the crypto market. However, the rebound strength is generally better than that of other types of tokens. Nevertheless, whether from the perspective of price rebound or the overall trend in the past six months, the price trends of these tokens seem to have no direct correlation with the performance of the TVL of these DeFi protocols.

Head Project Dynamic Analysis

Among these projects, several DeFi projects are worth paying special attention to.

A Leading Lending Platform: As a leading project in the Decentralized Finance protocol, its performance in the first half of the year was impressive, repeatedly breaking historical highs. It has also expanded to multiple public chains, currently supporting 18 public chains. In addition, to boost the token price, the platform's community has launched a proposal, including a weekly $1 million token buyback and revenue redistribution between the platform and the native stablecoin. According to the proposal, 80% of the rewards will be allocated to token stakers.

From the perspective of product interest rates and other aspects, the lending rates of the platform are not considered high, but it has a stronger depth, which has also made it favored by many large players. On June 10, a well-known family borrowed USDT worth $7.5 million from the platform. Overall, in the first half of 2025, the platform has achieved an upward trend in both fundamentals (TVL and other data) and market performance, and remains a standard template for the development of Decentralized Finance protocols.

A Leading DEX: This DEX officially launched a new version in 2025, introducing more flexible custom logic and significantly reducing Gas fees. In addition, the launch of its new chain further enhances the DEX's competitiveness in the Decentralized Finance ecosystem.

Although the TVL of the DEX declined in the first half of the year, a closer look reveals that this decline is mainly due to the drop in Ethereum prices. In terms of ETH staking volume, it has actually increased compared to January. In addition, after the launch of its new chain, it quickly captured a certain market share and has become the second-ranked public chain in terms of TVL on the DEX, with a TVL of approximately $546 million as of June 11.

A certain governance protocol: This protocol underwent a brand upgrade starting in 2024. Although its TVL began to decline after the upgrade, another protocol within the ecosystem has also shown new potential in the RWA direction. The combined TVL of these two protocols will exceed $11 billion, placing it among the top three. Additionally, its token performance in 2025 was also quite impressive, rising from a low of around $800 to $2100, an increase of over 170%. However, the upgrade plan for this protocol is clearly a relatively complex restructuring, involving governance mechanisms, token economics, and product portfolio, which makes it difficult for the market to form a simple understanding, and is not conducive to market dissemination.

Some Re-staking Protocol: This protocol has pioneered the new concept of "re-staking". Since its launch, its TVL has experienced explosive growth, reaching $12.4 billion, and it has now become the third-ranked DeFi protocol. Although the concept of re-staking started to cool down after a surge in 2024, and its TVL once entered a decline, since April, its TVL data has clearly entered a new growth cycle, increasing from $7 billion to $12.4 billion in less than 2 months, a growth rate of 77%. Shedding the outer layer of the concept, perhaps the true value of re-staking is being redefined by the market.

A Certain Liquidity Staking Protocol: As a leading project in the liquidity staking space, this protocol once dominated the market with its token, achieving a TVL of nearly $40 billion in 2024. However, since the second half of 2024, with the rapid growth of Ethereum L2, this protocol, which is overly concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet (over 99% share), has shown signs of decline, and its TVL has been on a downward trend. The recent rebound of its token is also not significant, with a maximum increase of 61% from its low to June 10, which is far below the average of the top 20 DeFi tokens. Currently, the total TVL of this protocol still ranks second, just behind a leading lending platform, indicating that scale effects are still in play. However, how to quickly transform to adapt to more markets may be the primary task to maintain its leading position.

The shift in regulatory attitude has undoubtedly injected a strong dose of confidence into the U.S. DeFi market. The long-standing regulatory uncertainty that has plagued project teams is expected to ease, and some pending innovations may finally come to fruition. The trends revealed by the data are also thought-provoking: although Ethereum remains the primary host for TVL, the development momentum of DeFi has increasingly shown its independence, even beginning to feed back into the value of underlying public chains. As one analyst put it, "The DeFi ecosystem is becoming the engine for ETH's rise."

In the future, the clarification of regulations will attract more traditional financial capital with a lower risk appetite to enter the DeFi field, bringing valuable fresh blood; at the same time, attempts by some financial giants to launch unique DeFi products not only indicate a broader prospect for integration but also mean that the competition for the incremental market will become more intense. This new phase, initiated by regulatory easing, may be a new starting point for DeFi to mature and deeply integrate with traditional finance.