Multiple DeFi chains experience over 90% decline since previous cycle.
North Korean hackers and attacks on decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchains have caused significant challenges, resulting in the outflow of tens of millions in user assets.
According to data from DefiLlama, various DeFi chains have experienced a loss of approximately 90% of total user deposits, especially since the previous cryptocurrency cycle. On-chain analyst 0xThoor identified Harmony, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain, as the platform with the largest drop in DeFi total value locked.
Harmony launched its layer-1 mainnet in 2019, two years prior to the previous bull run and its peak in 2021. By January 2022, Harmony’s total value locked reached an all-time high, surpassing $1.4 billion.
However, in June, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus stole $100 million from Harmony’s Horizon bridge, marking one of the largest hacks in DeFi history. Following this incident, Harmony’s user deposits steadily declined. At the time of publishing, the protocol held $1.7 million in total value locked, which is a 99% decrease from its peak in 2022.
Other DeFi projects such as Aurora, Moonrise, Canto, and Evmos have also experienced significant declines in total value locked, with decreases of at least 90%. Even Polygon, a popular Ethereum-based scaling solution, has lost 92% of its total value locked. The amount of crypto deposited on the L2 has decreased from $9.9 billion in 2021 to $700 million in early 2025. On Feb. 10, 0xThoor tweeted, “Many more total value locked charts will look like this over the coming years.”
Currently, the total value locked in DeFi stands at over $106 billion, a decrease from $175 billion in 2025. Despite the collapse of major protocols, projects like Base, which is incubated by Coinbase, and the emerging interoperability of Bitcoin DeFi, may drive the on-chain ecosystem to new heights as adoption accelerates.
