The Science of Market Dominance

In the 2025 DeFi landscape, Total Value Locked (TVL) has largely become a vanity metric. During expansionary cycles, most protocols exhibit green charts simply by existing in a high-liquidity environment. The DeFiStar Dominance Engine normalises this noise by tracking the relative percentage of the ecosystem held by each protocol.

Why "Relative Share" Matters

If Aave V3 adds $1 Billion in TVL but the total lending market adds $10 Billion, Aave has actually lost its grip on the market. Our algorithm detects these Regime Changes early, allowing you to see:

• Vampire Attacks: When aggressive reward programmes successfully siphon liquidity from established incumbents.
• Sticky vs Mercenary Capital: Which protocols maintain their share during volatility, indicating institutional confidence versus retail chasing transient yields.
• Protocol Decay: Identifying "Zombies" that remain large in absolute terms but are systematically being replaced by more capital-efficient challengers.

Decoding the Mover Metrics

The Vampire (Gainer) classification highlights protocols with a positive 30-day delta in market share. This is often a precursor to a pump in the protocol's underlying governance token. Conversely, Zombies represent protocols losing the "Liquidity War," often due to stale interest rate models or a failure to adapt to cross-chain liquidity hubs.