Aptos’ DeFi expansion – $1.3 billion locked, despite slowing development?

• Aptos’ all-time transactions climbed to 2 billion
• Altcoin’s long/short ratio indicated rising bullish sentiment

Aptos [APT] not only performed well on the price front, but the blockchain’s DeFi space also hit a new milestone recently. While there were several factors that allowed this achievement, much can be attributed to recent developments that happened in Aptos’ ecosystem. 

Aptos’ DeFi space is booming

Aptos recently shared a tweet revealing quite a few intriguing developments that happened in the blockchain’s ecosystem. First of all, the tweet mentioned a massive hike in Aptos’ TVL. In fact, over the last 2 months alone, the protocol’s TVL has doubled to $1.2B – Up ​​19x year-over-year.

This recent push has allowed APT’s TVL to hit an all-time high. And, its momentum might not exhaust itself anytime soon. At the time of writing, the blockchain’s TVL stood at $1.3 billion. 

Source: DeFiLlama

The tweet also mentioned a few new launches, which could have contributed to this growing TVL. For instance, AGDEX, a decentralized perpetual exchange, recently launched on Aptos.

The tweet also highlighted its top performing dApps of the past week in terms of unique active wallets. According to the same, Kana Labs topped the list with 923k UAW, followed by Chingari and KGeN, which had 921k and 886k UAW, respectively.

However, Santiment’s data revealed that despite the growth in Aptos’ DeFi sector, the blockchain’s development activity declined. This meant that fewer efforts were made by developers in improving the blockchain last week. Additionally, its dev activity contributors’ count also dipped — Further hinting at a drop in development activity. 

Source: Santiment

Aptos’ tweet also highlighted the blockchain’s network activity. Last week, the blockchain registered 4.1 million active users. Thanks to the same, Aptos’ all-time transactions hit 2 billion. Its DEX volume followed a similarly increasing trend as it hit $21.5 million— 28x in the past year.

However, upon closer inspection, AMBCrypto found that the blockchain’s network activity dropped in December. After a sharp hike, APT’s daily active addresses started to decline, as did its daily transactions.

In terms of captured value too, it didn’t look too well. Both Aptos’ fees and revenue fell over the last few days, according to Artemis’ data. 

Source: Artemis

Read Aptos’ [APT] Price Prediction 2024–2025 

APT looks bullish 

While all this happened, APT remained bullish on the price charts.

At the time of writing, the altcoin as valued at $14.97 following a hike of over 3% in over 24 hours.Moreover, the token’s long/short ratio registered an uptick over the same period too.

This meant that there were more long positions in the market than short positions – A sign of rising bullish sentiment.