Gate Decentralized Finance Daily ( October 11 ): TVL plummeted by 12% under Trump's tariff impact; UNI and multiple coins fell over 20%.

On October 11, the crypto market experienced a rare big dump, triggered by President Trump threatening to impose a 100% tariff on Chinese goods, which rapidly heightened market risk aversion. BTC briefly fell to $111,000, while ETH remained fluctuating above $3,800. The total locked value (TVL) of DeFi across the network plummeted to $146.898 billion, with a daily decline of up to 11.64%. The trading volume on major DEX platforms surged to $33.352 billion, indicating extreme market volatility and strong liquidity demand during extreme conditions. Leading protocols such as Aave, Lido, and EigenLayer collectively saw their TVL drop by over 10%, while DeFi zone tokens generally suffered significant declines, with MYX, UNI, and INJ leading the falls.

DeFi Market Overview

(Source: DeFiLlama)

Total DeFi TVL across the network: Today (October 11), due to Trump's threat of imposing a 100% tariff on China, the crypto market experienced a big dump overall, with over $19 billion liquidated in the past 24 hours. BTC is currently trading around $111,000, while ETH remains above $3,800; the total DeFi TVL across the network is currently $146.898 billion, a sudden drop of 11.64% in 24H.

DEX 24-hour volume: approximately 33.352 billion USD, with the top three being: Uniswap (10.431 billion USD), PancakeSwap (3.902 billion USD), Orca (2.493 billion USD).

Popular Protocols and On-Chain Performance

Based on TVL, the data of the top ten DeFi protocols is as follows:

(Source: DeFiLlama)

Among them, the top-ranked protocol data performances are as follows:

Aave: TVL approximately 37.133 billion USD, 24-hour fall 14.25%;

Lido: TVL approximately 32.144 billion USD, 24-hour fall of 13.2%;

EigenLayer: TVL approximately 16.011 billion USD, 24-hour fall of 13.04%;

Ethena: TVL approximately 13.564 billion USD, 24-hour fall 8.44%;

ether. fi: TVL approximately 9.397 billion USD, 24-hour fall 12.86%.

It is worth noting that the widespread decline in TVL is mainly due to the overall adjustment in the crypto market.

In addition, the top ten projects by protocol fees in the past 24 hours are as follows:

(Source: DeFiLlama)

Among them, Uniswap's protocol fees in the past 24 hours reached 16.87 million USD, second only to Tether (22.60 million USD); Jupiter's protocol fees in the past 24 hours reached 16.15 million USD, ranking third; Aave ranked fourth with 16.02 million USD.

Project News Summary

1. Mindao, the founder of the DeFi protocol dForce, stated on social media that this big dump is similar to the Luna incident in that both occurred when major trading platforms began accepting illegal fiat stablecoins as high LTV collateral, causing risks to penetrate between trading platforms. At that time it was UST, today it is USDe, and the "stability" + high pledge rate has confused most people.

When introducing illegal fiat stable assets as collateral, the worst combination is to use market price feeds while allowing for high collateral ratios; coupled with the lack of a fully open arbitrage environment on the CEX itself, arbitrage efficiency is low, and risks are further amplified. LSD-type assets face the same issue. These types of assets are essentially volatile assets disguised as "stability."

2. Hyperliquid officially stated on social media that during the recent market fluctuations, despite traffic and volume hitting all-time highs, there were zero downtime or delay issues on the Hyperliquid blockchain. The HyperBFT consensus and execution gracefully handled the peak throughput. This was an important stress test demonstrating that Hyperliquid's decentralized and fully on-chain financial system can operate robustly and at scale. The system's risk and margin implementations are functioning as designed, ensuring the platform's solvency during extreme fluctuations.

3. The lending protocol Venus on BSC announced on social media that the official team is aware of the WBETH price decoupling issue, which led to some users being unexpectedly liquidated during the drop early this morning. The team is actively investigating the incident, reviewing affected accounts, and assessing fair follow-up steps. In the meantime, the official team is enhancing risk management and oracle protection measures to help prevent similar incidents in the future.

It is reported that WBETH decoupled during the extreme drop in the market early this morning, falling to as low as 430 USD (with ETH dropping to 3435 USD), the WBETH/ETH exchange rate fell to 0.2, currently reported at 1.06, and the price of WBETH is currently reported at 4097 USD (with ETH at 3840 USD).

4. Aster announced that the second phase airdrop check page is now live. A total of 153932 wallets are eligible. Eligible participants will be able to claim on October 14, with the specific time to be announced on that day. There is no vesting period for this phase. The minimum point threshold required for Stage 2 airdrop is 10,000 Rh points. Users who reach or exceed this minimum during Stage 2 are eligible to claim the airdrop.

The amount of airdrop is calculated based on several factors of the Stage 2 event, including volume, holding duration, Aster assets (asBNB, USDF), realized profit and loss (P&L), as well as recommendations or team contributions during different epochs. The points of all eligible users will be proportionally converted into the final airdrop distribution. Aster does not encourage obtaining points through hedging or wash trading. The system may make adjustments, so even users with the same points may have different airdrop distributions.

Aster then stated that the official has completed a round of buyback of 100 million ASTER tokens, and the storage addresses of all repurchased tokens are transparent and public.

5. According to PeckShieldAlert monitoring, with BTC falling by 8.44%, the whale address 0xddf7...8ce5 encountered liquidation in the Aave protocol, losing cbBTC worth 14.4 million USD. Another whale address 0xee7c...2954 was just liquidated for cbBTC worth 9.5 million USD due to going long on cbBTC in Aave.

6. Guy Young, the founder of Ethena Labs, responded on social media to the rumors that "Ethena is urgently raising funds to avoid a repeat of the LUNA incident," stating that this is completely false.

7. According to official news, Grayscale has released a list of assets under consideration for future Grayscale investment products, as well as a list of the latest assets that have already been incorporated into its product series. The considered asset list includes Aptos (APT), Arbitrum (ARB), BNB, Celo (CELO), Mantle (MNT), MegaETH, Monad, Polkadot (DOT), Toncoin (TON), Ethena (ENA), Euler (EUL), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Jupiter (JUP), Kamino Finance (KMNO), Lombard (BARD), Maple Finance (SYRUP), Morpho (MORPHO), Pendle (PENDLE), Plume Network (PLUME), Sky (SKY), Bonk (BONK), Playtron, Flock (FLOCK), Grass (GRASS), Kaito (KAITO), Prime Intellect, Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL), Worldcoin (WLD), Geodnet (GEOD), Jito (JTO), Layer Zero (ZRO), Wormhole (W).

8. MetaMask announced that it will launch multi-chain accounts at the end of October, allowing users to group and manage EVM and non-EVM addresses, and to trade and track account assets between the two networks. In existing accounts on MetaMask, all EVM accounts will retain their names and addresses. Each EVM address will be grouped into a multi-chain account and paired with its corresponding Solana address. If a user already has a Solana address, that address will be paired with the EVM address to form the multi-chain account. If not, the system will create a new Solana address for the user. MetaMask's multi-chain accounts will also support other networks such as Bitcoin, Tron, and Monad.

9. Crypto KOL Ansem stated, "The innovation of this round of crypto from 0 to 1 is to create a 24/7 trading market for all assets (not just cryptocurrencies). The launch of Perp Dex will propel on-chain speculation to new heights, as there is a large amount of "sticky funds" in the crypto space that are unwilling to exit the chain, and with the arrival of stablecoin regulation and government support, a large amount of funds is also flowing on-chain.

The investment opportunities in the next decade lie in going long on faster, more efficient, permissionless global financial protocols, while shorting the outdated beneficiaries of traditional finance.

10. CZ posted that he noticed discussions on social media about "Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff appearing in a group photo released by YZi Labs in 2018." Many people might not know that Jeff was one of the members of the first incubation program at YZi Labs in 2018. Unfortunately, the project ended in failure at that time, and YZi Labs lost its investment, which is a common occurrence in the venture capital circle. At that time, I didn't interact much with Jeff and had long forgotten about it. Originally, I was supposed to have a phone call with Jeff a few months ago, but I missed the opportunity due to a scheduling error, and I haven't found a chance to reschedule since then. CZ added that YZi Labs has not obtained and does not hold any investment rights in Hyperliquid (whether equity or tokens).

11. Negotiations between Republican and Democratic senators in the United States regarding legislation on the structure of the crypto market have stalled due to a new proposal from Democrats aimed at regulating DeFi, which has sparked strong opposition within the industry. Republicans are frustrated by their Democratic colleagues' differing views on the DeFi issue and have provided little substantive feedback on the draft proposal. Despite both sides having had "productive discussions" in recent weeks, Republicans informed Democrats on Wednesday that negotiations are now paused until an agreement is reached on the revision date — the chair of the banking committee had originally planned to conduct revisions on September 30.

Multiple sources have confirmed that Republicans have been trying to set the revision date for late October, but Democrats have been cautious, unwilling to formally set a date, expressing that they want more time to draft a bipartisan proposal. Both sides are blaming each other, and it remains unclear which side will make concessions first: will Democrats agree to the revision date, or will Republicans return to the negotiating table? The longer the deadlock continues, the more likely it is that the bill will be delayed until 2026 before reaching President Trump’s desk, at which point Congress will undoubtedly shift its focus to the midterm elections, and cryptocurrency policy will take a back seat.

Brian Armstrong posted on the X platform stating that he will absolutely not accept the DeFi regulatory proposal from the U.S. Senate Democrats, calling it a bad proposal that would simply hinder innovation and prevent the U.S. from becoming the world's crypto capital. Brian Armstrong also retweeted a statement from the Blockchain Association's CEO, Summer Mersinger, which stated that the U.S. Democrats' DeFi regulatory proposal is fundamentally uncompliant and would actually completely ban decentralized finance, wallet development, and other applications within the U.S.

Overview of Major Ecological Leading DeFi Projects

Ethereum DEX 24-hour volume remains the highest, at approximately $8.421 billion, with a week-on-week growth of 29.71%. The top three projects are:

Uniswap ($5.802 billion), Fluid ($1.658 billion), Curve Finance ($0.92109 billion);

Solana DEX ranks second in 24-hour trading volume, approximately $8.308 billion, with a week-on-week growth of 45.04%. The top three projects are:

Orca (2.491 billion USD), Meteora (1.718 billion USD), Raydium (1.518 billion USD);

BSC DEX ranks third in 24-hour volume with approximately $5.551 billion, a week-on-week growth of 43.98%; the top three projects are:

PancakeSwap (3.356 billion USD), Uniswap (1.082 billion USD), four.meme (276.49 million USD).

Gate DeFi zone Token market data

According to the data from the Gate market page, the price performance of the top ten tokens in the DeFi zone is as follows:

(Source: Gate DeFi Sector Quotes)

As of October 11, the overall crypto market has fallen, and the tokens in the Decentralized Finance zone have also declined, specifically:

AAVE is currently reported at 240.55 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 13.03%;

UNI is currently reported at 6.05 dollars, with a 24-hour fall of 26.06%;

WLFI is currently priced at $0.1348, with a 24-hour fall of 23.79%;

2Z is currently priced at 0.2757 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 16.51%;

INJ is currently reported at 9.24 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 24.61%;

MYX is currently reported at 3.22 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 36.35%;

CRV is currently reported at 0.5401 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 26.77%;

MORPHO is currently reported at 1.64 USD, with a 24-hour fall of 1.04%.

Market Trend Analysis

Macroeconomic shocks trigger a widespread sell-off, TVL significantly shrinks Affected by Trump's tariff remarks, global risk assets are under pressure, with liquidation in the crypto market exceeding 19 billion USD. The DeFi zone is hit the hardest, with protocols like Aave, Lido, and EigenLayer experiencing a daily evaporation of over 10% in locked-up funds, and signs of capital outflow are evident.

DEX volume surges, panic selling leads to liquidity explosion Amidst severe market fluctuations, the 24-hour trading volumes of Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and Orca reached $10.431 billion, $3.902 billion, and $2.493 billion respectively, indicating active large-scale position closing and hedging operations by investors.

Systemic risks resurface, market attention on the security of stablecoins and lending protocols Venus faced user liquidations due to the de-pegging of WBETH, and Aave experienced a whale liquidation event, exacerbating market panic. The reliance of DeFi protocols on stable assets and the chain reaction of liquidation mechanisms once again expose potential systemic risks.

Policy and regulatory expectations increase market uncertainty Negotiations in the U.S. Senate regarding the DeFi regulatory proposal have stalled, with industry leaders such as Brian Armstrong publicly opposing the proposal, arguing that it will "stifle innovation." This regulatory uncertainty has been further amplified in the market panic.

Aster Airdrop and Buyback Become Few Positive Events Aster announced the launch of the second phase airdrop check page and completed the buyback of 100 million ASTER, providing a short-term positive signal amid the current sluggish sentiment, but overall it is difficult to offset the systematic downward pressure in the market.

Analyst Views

Capital Hedging, DeFi Faces Periodic Adjustment Analysts point out that this round of big dump is mainly driven by macro sentiment and chain liquidations, rather than the imbalance of a single protocol. As the market leverage rapidly declines, the short-term DeFi zone may continue to be under pressure, but medium to long-term capital is expected to flow back in after interest rates and inflation expectations stabilize.

High DEX Activity Reflects Changes in Trading Structure Despite the market downturn, DEX volume has reached a new high for this phase, indicating that on-chain trading is gradually replacing centralized exchanges as a safe haven. The counter-trend growth of protocol revenues from Uniswap and Jupiter also demonstrates the resilience of the on-chain trading ecosystem.

Risk Asset Liquidation Exposes Leverage Hazards The frequent liquidations on lending platforms like Aave and Venus during extreme market conditions highlight that Decentralized Finance still needs to improve oracle mechanisms and risk control systems. Analysts believe that this big dump may prompt protocols to enhance risk parameter adjustments in the future.

Regulatory Stalemate Delays Policy Benefits The stagnation of DeFi regulatory negotiations in the United States suppresses market confidence. Some industry insiders believe that a clear regulatory framework is unlikely to be established before the mid-term elections in 2026, and the market will need to self-repair in an uncertain environment in the short term.

High-quality assets may welcome a new round of layout opportunities Industry insiders such as dForce founder Mindao and Liquid Capital founder Yi Lihua have stated that during extreme market panic, it is actually a good time to invest in high-quality public chains and infrastructure-type DeFi protocols. After the capital is cleared, projects with safety and stable income capabilities may recover first.

Conclusion

The big dump on October 11 revealed the vulnerability of the DeFi market under macro turmoil and regulatory uncertainty, while also validating the operational resilience of decentralized infrastructure in high-pressure environments. Although it is still affected by liquidations and capital outflows in the short term, the structural advantages of decentralized finance will continue to strengthen in the long term.