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Key Takeaways
- Ethereum’s DeFi TVL share fell from 63.5% to 53% between January 2025 and May 2026.
- Defillama data shows Ethereum holds around $45B TVL, with Solana and BNB Chain gaining ground.
- Layer-2 chains like Base (5.31% TVL share) are reshaping Ethereum’s multichain footprint.
Rival Chains Close the Gap
In absolute terms, Ethereum still commands the largest DeFi stack on any single chain, with approximately $45.50 billion in TVL. But the share erosion tells a different story as competing blockchains have been absorbing capital at a faster rate, diversifying DeFi’s liquidity footprint across a growing set of networks.
According to Defillama’s chain rankings, Solana holds 6.76% of total DeFi TVL, followed closely by BNB Chain at 6.55%, Bitcoin at 6.16%, Tron at 6.01%, Base at 5.31%, and Hyperliquid at 1.82%. No single rival comes close to Ethereum in absolute size, but the cumulative shift is significant, with the combined share of non-Ethereum chains now standing at roughly 47% of the global DeFi market.
The drivers behind Ethereum’s share decline are well-established, i.e., lower transaction costs on rival networks, the maturation of Ethereum-aligned layer-2 chains that pull TVL away from mainnet, and the growth of DeFi-native ecosystems on Solana and BNB Chain in particular. Protocols like Jupiter, Raydium, and Kamino on Solana, and Pancakeswap on BNB Chain, have attracted billions in liquidity that might previously have defaulted to Ethereum.
The layer-2 factor deserves particular attention, as much of what is built for Ethereum, including Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism, settles to Ethereum but registers as a separate chain in DeFi analytics dashboards. If layer-2 TVL were consolidated under the Ethereum umbrella, the network’s effective share would be substantially higher.
The timing of this data is notable given that Ethereum has faced sustained narrative pressure heading into mid-2026, with ongoing debates about its fee revenue trajectory, the pace of its development roadmap, and intensifying competition from faster, cheaper chains.
The broader multichain direction also appears to be structural, with Jesse Pollak, creator of Base, capturing the prevailing sentiment in a post on May 9, stating, “bring every financial instrument onchain.” Whether that unfolds on the Ethereum mainnet, its layer-2 ecosystem, or across rival chains remains the defining question for DeFi’s next phase of growth.
