DeFi tokens are leading the current rally, most jumping 25% or more, after US citizens elected Republican nominee Donald Trump as the next president, sparking hopes for a “DeFi Renaissance.”
The governance token for liquid staking leader Lido, LDO, has increased 40.3% to $1.37 in the last 24 hours, giving the cryptocurrency a market cap of nearly $1.2 billion. The native tokens for Solana-based decentralized exchange Raydium and Ethereum-based exchange Uniswap have both jumped more than 30% to $4.30 and $9.49, respectively, in the same time period.
Meanwhile, synthetic dollar provider Ethena’s governing token ENA has grown 35.7% to 47 cents, while top lending protocol by total value locked Aave has seen its token spring 28%. The number of deposits into lending protocols also reached a two-year high of $52.4 billion on Monday, data from blockchain analytics firm Artemis shows.
With U.S. citizens electing Trump and more crypto-friendly representatives in the legislative branch, those in the DeFi ecosystem are optimistic for regulatory clarity.
“The biggest Trump-specific change is likely to be a push for greater regulatory clarity around the broader crypto ecosystem, so we think altcoins could see meaningful outperformance as well,” wrote Seth Ginns, managing partner and head of liquid investments at CoinFund, in an email to Unchained.
According to Alexander Cutler, a core contributor of Aerdorome, a DEX on Coinbase-incubated L2 Base, the lack of legal and regulatory clarity has been one of the biggest limiting factors for the growth of DeFi. “The U.S. elections are seemingly sending a signal that a more amenable regulatory regime might be incoming,” Cutler added.
Under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chaired by Gary Gensler has been hostile to the crypto space, bringing a number of enforcement actions against several DeFi protocols. For example, the SEC not only gave a Wells notice to Uniswap Labs, notifying the firm of upcoming legal action, but the agency also implied in a suit against software developer Consensys that Lido’s liquid staking token stETH was an unregistered security.
Crypto participants anticipate Trump will fire Gensler, which “could provide guidance on how can DeFi protocols like Uniswap turn on their fee switch so that [it] can rebate protocol revenue to UNI token holders,” wrote Keyu Liu, an investor at crypto prop investment firm Primitive Ventures. Optimism about DeFi has improved because, with clearer guidance, builders can focus on the biggest problem for DeFi tokens which is their inability to redirect revenue to holders, per Liu.
On Wednesday evening, crypto market maker and liquidity provider Wintermute created a governance proposal with the end goal of enabling an ENA fee switch. Ethena has generated $128.4 million in fees year-to-date, per Token Terminal.
Others, such as X users @degentradingLSD and @chainyoda, hope a new political atmosphere leads to a new ETH ETF with staking rewards. On Wednesday night, Coinbase protocol specialist Viktor Bunin wrote, that in light of a new political regime, crypto will “fire Gary,” “turn on staking in ETH ETFs,” and “shutter SEC lawfare investigations.”
As to why people are excited about DeFi’s growth trajectory and ability to disrupt traditional finance, Aerodrome’s Cutler argues DeFi has “real undisputed product market fit, delivering institutional level products and services, without the value extraction of intermediaries. That creates a surplus of value that can be shared with users.”
“DeFi is so back. Ethereum holders became about $34 [billion] richer today. It matters because they’re not just buying DeFi tokens, but also using the protocols,” wrote Joseph Schiarizzi, founder of stablecoin provider Nerite, in a message to Unchained. “There’s more ETH in the protocols and that ETH is worth more. So buying DeFi tokens could be seen as getting beta on that.”
The total value locked in DeFi protocols currently stands at almost $89 billion, per DefiLlama.
