3 out of 4 of the Top Smart Contract Tokens Outpaced Ethereum's 12 Month Gains

While the price of bitcoin has been volatile during the last seven days, a number of smart contract platforms have been performing far better this week. Statistics indicate that the total value locked (TVL) in decentralized finance (defi) is $267 billion and the TVL held on Ethereum commands the lion’s share of this value. Ethereum is the largest smart contract platform today, in terms of market valuation, but a number of competitors have increased significantly in value over the last 12 months.

3 Smart Contract Tokens Surpassed Ethereum’s 12 Month Gains by a Long Shot

The largest smart contract platform Ethereum (ETH) has a market valuation of around $555 billion and it commands 18.7% of the entire crypto economy’s net value. Metrics also show that there’s $267 billion TVL in defi today, and the Ethereum protocol captures $179 billion or 49.16% of the overall TVL in defi. In terms of trade volume, ether has $15.5 billion in global swaps today, which is much larger than its competitors. ETH has outpaced BTC in 12 month gains with 914% during the last year, compared to BTC’s 299% increase in value.

However, a number of other smart contract platforms have outperformed ETH’s 12-month stats. For instance, while solana (SOL) holds the fifth largest market capitalization, in terms of smart contract platforms it is the second-largest chain with an overall valuation of $71.2 billion. ETH’s 914% 12 month gain is decent but SOL jumped 12,337% during the last year. Solana’s market capitalization dominance is 2.39% on Saturday. The TVL held in defi on the Solana network is $14.22 billion, which is the third-largest TVL by chain below the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

Cardano (ADA) is the third-largest smart contract platform with a market capitalization of around $66.5 billion today. ADA has also outperformed ethereum’s (ETH) 12-month gains as ADA has risen 1,881% this past year. In terms of TVL in defi, metrics from defillama.com do not include any statistics for the Cardano blockchain. Cardano’s market capitalization on Saturday is around 2.23% of the whole market economy. The fourth-largest smart contract platform in terms of overall market valuation is the crypto asset avalanche (AVAX).

5th Largest Smart Contract Token Chainlink Sees Smaller Gains Than Ethereum This Year — LUNA and MATIC Climb in Value

Avalanche (AVAX) has a market capitalization of around $20 billion on Saturday and there’s $625 million in global AVAX swaps during the last 24 hours. Avalanche is represented on defillama.com’s chains market metrics, and is the fifth-largest defi chain in terms of TVL ($10.11B) under Terra. Avalanche is also under the market valuation of terra (LUNA) as AVAX holds the 13th largest market position. 12-month metrics indicate that AVAX too has outpaced ethereum’s gains as AVAX climbed 2,598% year to date.

Chainlink (LINK) is the fifth-largest smart contract platform by market capitalization with an overall valuation of $15.9 billion today. The $15.9 billion puts LINK in the 15th market position out of the 10,000+ crypto-assets in existence. Unfortunately for ‘LINK Marines,’ chainlink has not outpaced ethereum in terms of gains. Year-to-date, LINK has gained 175% in value after hitting the crypto asset’s all-time high six months ago on May 10, 2021. Still, in terms of smart contract platforms, the sixth-largest chain Algorand (ALGO) needs to jump 17.61% higher in order to surpass LINK’s market valuation.

Other top-performing smart contract platform tokens include terra (LUNA) up 15,925% year-to-date, polygon (MATIC) jumped 10,859% in the last 12 months, and fantom (FTM) up 14,924% during the course of the last year. Top defi TVLs without mentioning ETH, SOL, AVAX, include blockchains like Binance Smart Chain ($21.07B), Terra ($10.91B), Tron ($6.45B), Fantom ($5.48B), and Polygon ($5B).