DeFi dapps showed a slight recovery for the first time since May, with the daily average of unique active wallets (UAWs) increasing 3.7% on a month-over-month basis, according to a report from DappRadar.
The rise was partially driven by the Flow protocol, which rose 577% UAW due to Instagram's support of its NFTs and the game Solitaire Blitz. On the other hand, Solana UAW shrank by 53% in August from the previous month, while transactions dropped by 68%, the findings showed.
There were 1.67 million unique wallets connected to blockchain DApps in August, down 3.52% from last month, and down 14.73% compared to August 2021.
Among industries, gaming accounted for over 50% of the activity usage, with 847,230 daily UAW, although it is down 11% and the number of transactions declined 12.7% month-to-month to $698 million. On the NFT side, UAW fell by 16.7% to 114,542 — the lowest since June 2021, per the report.
Despite the DeFi increase in unique active wallets, the overall DeFi total value locked (TVL) still showed a significant drop; from $250 billion at the beginning of 2022 to $74.21 billion in August.
The report highlighted that August was "particularly difficult for the market because of the Tornado Cash crisis," which dropped the industry TVL by 10.47% to lose $8.7 billion. On Aug. 8, the U.S. Treasury Department accused the crypto mixer platform of laundering more than $7 billion in cryptocurrencies, including $455 million allegedly stolen by North Korean hackers.
Following the sanctions, the Tornado Cash (TORN) price plummeted by 45% in two days, losing almost half of its market value.
Ethereum chain controls 69% of the DeFi TVL with $51.47 billion, according to the report — although it has lost 11% last month, and dropped 56.63% since August 2021. Layer-2 protocols based on Ethereum showed signals of growth "mainly driven by the upcoming Ethereum Merge," with Optimism increasing 57.61% in August for a $1 billion total locked value, Arbitrum rising 14.36%, and Polygon gaining 6.50% month-to-month.
