Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as one of the most promising use cases for blockchain and cryptocurrencies. With applications like staking, liquidity pools, lending, and yield farming, it has provided a wide range of financial inst
By Mrig P
Published on Mar 13, 2025
Last modified on Jul 21, 2025
Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as one of the most promising use cases for blockchain and cryptocurrencies. With applications like staking, liquidity pools, lending, and yield farming, it has provided a wide range of financial instruments without the need for a centralized infrastructure or intermediaries.
As a result, DeFi coins, which play a crucial role in facilitating these transactions, have become essential among crypto users.
This article takes a closer look at some of the largest DeFi coins by market capitalization.
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Ethereum. The DEX allows users to trade ERC-20 tokens with smart contracts called liquidity pools instead of relying on a central intermediary and an order book to match buyers and sellers.
UNI is the native token of Uniswap. The DEX airdropped 400 UNI tokens (worth ~$1,500 dollars at the time, and up to a high of $17,000 for users that held through April 2021) to any user who had interacted with the platform before September 1, 2020.
Lido is a liquid staking solution that aims to solve illiquidity, immovability, and inaccessibility problems that come with staking cryptocurrencies in blockchain networks using the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism.
The way it achieves this is simple: it issues tokens against staked funds in a 1:1 ratio, and users can use these tokens to participate in on-chain activities like lending and borrowing.
Different blockchain networks have different staked tokens and they’re named by adding an “st” prefix to the original crypto token. For instance, if users stake Ether with Lido DAO, they receive stETH, which can be used to earn yield and staking rewards, just like regular ETH. When users decide to redeem the cryptocurrencies they staked, the staked tokens are burned.
LDO is a governance token. LDO token holders can’t do much besides voting on protocol upgrade proposals and deciding on key parameters like platform fees.
Aave is a non-custodial lending protocol that allows users to borrow assets from a liquidity pool or lend assets and earn interest.
Aave (AAVE) started as ETHlend (LEND) in 2017 as a peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform that matched borrowers and lenders. The platform ran into liquidity issues during the 2018 bear market and faced difficulties in matching loan requests to offers.
The team made significant changes to the underlying technology of the platform and launched ETHLend as Aave, which leveraged the liquidity pool model instead of a peer-to-peer model. So, instead of lending and borrowing directly with each other, Aave allowed users to lend their assets to a pool (aka add liquidity), and others could borrow from it for a specified interest rate.
Maker is a DeFi project that allows users to generate DAI, a decentralized stablecoin, by putting up any supported Ethereum-based asset as collateral.
If users want to redeem their collateral, they have to pay back their DAI loan along with the platform fees. In the event that the users can’t repay their loan, the protocol will liquidate the assets.
THORChain is a blockchain built as a decentralized exchange that allows anyone to swap two assets based on two different chains without the need for a centralized intermediary. It uses the Proof of Stake consensus protocol and has a native DeFi coin called RUNE.
dydx is a decentralized exchange that enables users to trade perpetual contracts and spot-trade cryptocurrencies.
Unlike other decentralized exchanges that use automated market makers (AMMs), dydx uses off-chain matching engines like centralized exchanges to conduct trades. The crypto exchange was developed on the Ethereum blockchain and uses Starkware, a Layer-2 solution, to reduce Ethereum gas fees.
Curve is a DEX that enables users to trade assets that are similar in nature, like stablecoins.
The trading fee on Curve is very low. While Uniswap collects a 0.3% trading fee, Curve only charges 0.04%. This price reduction may not look like much, but it makes a significant difference for large-volume trades.
Curve’s native token is CRV, which has three main use cases. All of them involve locking CRV tokens to obtain vote-escrowed (veCRV) tokens, which are simply CRV tokens locked for a certain time.
PancakeSwap is a decentralized exchange that’s native to the BNB chain (previously Binance Smart Chain). And it works exactly like Uniswap.
Compound is a decentralized protocol that enables users to supply collateral assets to smart contracts that anyone can borrow against without the need for an intermediary.
Like many other DeFi projects, Compound was initially a centralized protocol. Its second version introduced progressive decentralization with a governance token.
COMP is the governance token of Compound. COMP tokens can also be used as collateral to borrow assets on the platform.
1Inch is a DEX aggregator that helps users find the best possible token price by gathering data from all the top decentralized exchanges. It currently facilitates trades across five blockchain networks: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
The platform’s native token is called 1INCH and is available on Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain.
Yearn Finance is a suite of DeFi protocols that helps investors, DAOs, and other protocols manage their passive earnings from their digital assets.
It has partnered with multiple DeFi protocols like SushiSwap and C.R.E.A.M to provide token swaps, insurance, and lending services. It’s also well-known for its vaults that automate yield farming for crypto users.
Yearn Finance launched YFI in 2021 and gave away all 30,000 tokens to its users.
YFI can be used for governance and allows its token holders to receive a portion of the trading fees the platform earns.
Balancer is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that works similarly to Uniswap. It’s an automated market maker that allows users to swap tokens.
The difference is that in addition to providing liquidity pools in a 1:1 ratio, Balancer also provides weighted pools with up to eight tokens, stablecoin pools, and custom logic pools.
BAL is used for governance and users can also lock their BAL tokens to get veBAL (vote-escrowed BAL) tokens, which unlocks a host of benefits like boosts that allow them to earn more BAL over time.
Rocket Pool is a liquid staking protocol that allows users to stake ETH by depositing as little as 0.01 ETH.
Once a user deposits ETH to stake it, they receive rETH tokens that they can use on other protocols or simply hold in their wallet.
RPL is the native token and its primary use is to allow holders to vote on protocol-related decisions.
Now that you know the top DeFi coins, you can begin your DeFi journey with MoonPay.
To get started, simply buy cryptocurrency via MoonPay using your credit card or any other preferred payment method. You can also top up your wallet with euros, pounds, or dollars and use your MoonPay Balance to purchase DeFi tokens listed in this article. With MoonPay Balance, you'll enjoy faster transactions, lower fees, and higher approval rates.
MoonPay also makes it easy to sell crypto like ETH when you decide it's time to cash out. Simply enter the amount of the token you'd like to sell and enter the details where you want to receive your funds.
Want to exchange DeFi coins like AAVE and COMP for other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin?
MoonPay allows you to swap crypto cross-chain with competitive rates, directly from your non-custodial wallet.
