• Ethereum maintains over 50% of the total blockchain TVL, largely due to its vast DeFi ecosystem and smart contract capabilities.
• Tron has rapidly expanded its TVL through its focus on decentralized finance, solidifying its position in the crypto market.
• BNB appeals to developers and users for its high transaction speed and low fees, making it a strong contender in DeFi.

In this highly developing area of DeFi, many blockchains are competing to be the king among them for offering special features, scalability, and low cost. TVL is an important metric that measures how much value has been locked into these chains. Such leading blockchains include Ethereum, TRON, BNB, Avalanche, and Arbitrum. Each is at the top for different reasons: Ethereum in its smart contract capabilities and Arbitrum for efficient layer-2 scaling. These blockchains, in turn, grow with DeFi to build up the future of financial applications and services.

Ethereum (ETH)

Current price:$2,438.73

Market cap:$293.4B

Ethereum currently represents the largest blockchain by Total Value Locked and has over half of the total market value in DeFi.By realizing smart contracts uniquely, developers can build all manner of dApps-from purely financial to even gaming-on-chain. The Ethereum network, powered by its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), pays transaction fees known as gas and supporting staking. Recent upgrades-like Ethereum 2.0-have migrated the network from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake significantly improving scalability while hugely decreasing energy consumption.

TRON – TRX

Current price:$0.1545

Market cap:$13.3B

Tron grew to become one of the leading chains in terms of TVL due to its highly fast transaction speeds and much lower fees. The Tron network makes use of a delegated proof-of-stake consensus, much quicker to process and allows for an ever-growing DeFi ecosystem building atop it. Its native cryptocurrency, TRX, fuels the network’s transactions and smart contracts, offering a fast-scaling platform for decentralized apps. The growing TVL of Tron illustrates its potential to surge forward in front of DeFi projects which try to look for cheaper alternatives to Ethereum.

BNB (BNB)

Current price:$564.66

Market cap:$82.4B

BNB is a blockchain by Binance meant for speed and low transaction costs. The network, once called Binance Smart Chain, serves as a base layer for numerous DeFi projects, dApps, and other blockchain services. As was said above, its native coin is used for paying transaction fees, staking, and governance. Since its fees are much lower and throughput much higher than Ethereum, the BNB has grown really fast and become one of the leading protagonists in the field of decentralized finance. The functionality inherently has more value because it is integrated into the broader Binance ecosystem.

Avalanche (AVAX)

Current price:$26.73

Market cap:$10.8B

Avalanche is a high-throughput blockchain, and through its unique subnet architecture, true scalability and speed offer almost instant transaction finality. Because of this proof of stake model of consensus, the network achieves high throughput without giving up security or decentralization. The native token, AVAX, is used for paying transaction fees, staking, and participating in governance. That being said, it is a nutshell that developers and users alike flocked to Avalanche in search of speed, while the addition of its unique infrastructure placed it in the top five blockchains by TVL.

Arbitrum (ARB)

Current price:$0.559

Market cap:$2.021B

Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that targets increasing transaction efficiency by offering higher speed, much lower cost, and very low latency. It directly adopts Ethereum’s security model and thus supports the mainnet, allowing for rapid and low-cost transactions, hence making the platform a go-to for many DeFi projects. The ARB token pays for reduced transaction fees on the network, and increased adoption has translated into a steady rise in Total Value Locked. As more DeFi projects seek to optimize efficiency in transactions through Arbitrum, it continues to climb in the blockchain rankings.