Top Protocols on Arbitrum by Total Value Locked

Arbitrum is a layer 2 scaling solution built on Ethereum, using Optimistic roll-up technology. Arbitrum allows for cheaper and faster transactions as compared to the Ethereum mainnet. L2s, such as Arbitrum and Optimism, have gained significant traction, especially after the Ethereum Merge in September 2022. Arbitrum is now the fourth largest chain across crypto by Total Value Locked (TVL). Today, Arbitrum’s two billion in TVL across the chain is steadily gaining week-on-week, and it has recently overtaken Ethereum in terms of daily transactions.

But what’s there to do on Arbitrum? Let’s check out some of the largest protocols on the chain by TVL!

Top Protocols on Arbitrum by Total Value Locked

1. GMX

Known for its unique dual-token model using GLP, a basket of stablecoins and blue-chip assets, and the GMX token, GMX is a spot and perpetual decentralized exchange (DEX). Originating from Binance Smart Chain as Gambit, GMX expanded to Avalanche as GMX and eventually to Arbitrum in August 2022.

Due to its high-yields on GLP during the bear market, GMX gained popularity alongside the “real-yield” narrative, quickly taking the top position in Arbitrum and dominating the position since. In fact, GMX is the fourth highest revenue-generating project across all blockchains and decentralized applications (DApps) in the last 180 days.

2. Uniswap V3

As one of the first AMMs to gain significant traction in DeFi, Uniswap is a household name in the space, with more than $4 billion in TVL across 5 chains. Uniswap also popularized the concentrated liquidity model with Uniswap V3, which greatly increased the capital efficiency of the protocol and has since been duplicated on several other DEXs. Today Uniswap holds more than $150 million on Arbitrum alone.

3. Radiant Capital

Radiant Capital is currently the top money market protocol of Arbitrum. Radiant facilitates lending and borrowing on-chain, but with a twist. It aims to be an omnichain money market platform. This means that their goal is for users to be able to deposit assets on one chain and borrow against their collateral on another chain. Radiant Capital partnered with Stargate to facilitate their omnichain vision.

4. Sushi

Hot on its heels, fellow multi-chain AMM and Uniswap fork, Sushi, is fourth in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Sushi has long pursued a more aggressive expansion across chains compared to Uniswap and has operations on almost 20 chains with more than $600 million in TVL.

Although Sushi launched on Arbitrum three months before Uniswap in May 2021, they eventually lost their first-mover edge to their close rival.

5. ZyberSwap

ZyberSwap is a traditional automated market maker (AMM) with liquidity pools for users to deposit into and earn yield on. ZyberSwap currently supports extremely high yields on native token pairs, using native token emissions.

The high yields on these pools have successfully bootstrapped a significant pool of liquidity for ZyberSwap, quickly sending them into the top 10 highest TVL protocols on Arbitrum in just a short span of 3 weeks, against strong competitors such as Uniswap and Sushi.

6. Curve Finance

Curve Finance is an AMM designed to provide low slippage swaps between assets with identical pegs, such as stablecoins or ETH liquid staking derivatives (LSDs). Since its launch, Curve has become the de facto DEX for stablecoin swaps across more than 10 chains and solidified its position as a DeFi titan.

Curve is also well-known for its vote-escrowed CRV tokens, where CRV token holders can lock their tokens for up to 4 years in exchange for voting power, rewards and bribes from external protocols. This tokenomics model continues to be copied across new projects, highlighting its continued success many years after their launch.

Curve continues to innovate and is expected to ship out their native stablecoin, crvUSD, sometime in early 2023.

9. Aave

Anyone who has engaged in lending or borrowing activities on-chain before would definitely have heard the name, Aave. Beginning as ETHLend in 2017, Aave rose to prominence as DeFi’s dominant money market protocol, quickly climbing to become the 4th largest DApp by TVL. Spanning across 7 chains, Aave however, does not rest on their laurels, with the recent deployment of Aave V3 and their upcoming stablecoin, GHO, which has just been launched successfully on Testnet.