Multiple DeFi mainstays crack top 20 in long-awaited ‘Great Repricing’

Hardcore decentralized finance (DeFi) adherents woke up today to a long-awaited sight on Coingecko’s top 100 rankings by marketcap: native tokens for popular DeFi platforms Synthetix and Aave have cracked into the top 20, an event DeFi observers have heralded as “The Great Repricing.”

DeFi investors, users, and builders have long argued that the sector writ large is wildly undervalued relative to other cryptocurrency projects given DeFi’s growing userbases, cash flows from protocol fees, and soaring levels of activity compared to “zombie chain” layer-1 networks scattered throughout the top of the marketcap rankings.

Aave and Synthetix have broken the top 20 and passed Tezos and Tron in marketcap. Remember “The Great DeFi Repricing” I’ve been ranting about for months? Ya, it’s happening. Soon the top 10 will be ETH, BTC and DeFi.

— eric.eth (@econoar) January 16, 2021

If the past week is any indication, the wider market appears to have finally woken up to the incongruities. SNX and AAVE are up 40% and 74% on the week, both topping $2.3 billion by marketcap and eclipsing layer-1s such as Tezos and Tron. 

$AAVE have a higher market cap than $TRX and $XTZ now according to @coingecko .I've maintained this view since late 2019 that top DeFi crypto will gradually overtake these old layer 1 coin in the top 20 spot by mcap.

— Arthur on Tech (@Arthur_0x) January 16, 2021

The moves follow promising developments for both projects. Aave has a proposal in the works that, if approved by governance, will alter the $370 million Safety Module to potentially create a whole new insurance product line, while Synthetix has been buoyed by the launch of a layer-2 scaling solution. 

What’s more, some think this could be just the start for DeFi assets as a new “alt szn” dawns.

(17/27) Indeed, even if no new money enters the space, we see this repricing being corrected by the market as money flows towards the only vertical in crypto showing signs of product market fitHowever, it will be a bumpy ride as you can't have massive upside without volatility

— José Maria Macedo (@ZeMariaMacedo) September 9, 2020

“While this is an important milestone, it is only the beginning of a trend we’ve been talking about for a while,” said Delphi Digital partner José Macedo in an interview with Cointelegraph. “[...] In terms of where this is going, the TAM for consumer finance is $3.2T. We see the value prop for DeFi as doing to finance what the internet did to data; transforming financial primitives into “Money Legos” and creating an open ecosystem that enables permissionless innovation across the stack.” 

It’s a long-term view that could have accomplishments like reaching the top 20 by cryptocurrency rankings seem like a pittance, but Macedo warns that the road to reaching such lofty goals won’t necessarily be a smooth one:

While the general direction is clear, it’s worth remembering that you cannot have massive upside without volatility. We are undoubtedly in for a bumpy ride, with regulation looming large and DeFi being declared dead many times over.