Total value locked (TVL)

Total value locked (TVL) is the dollar amount of crypto assets deposited into a DeFi protocol's smart contracts at a given moment. It's a rough gauge of how much trust and money a protocol has attracted, so readers often use it to compare lending platforms, exchanges, or staking services before deciding where activity is concentrated. TVL isn't the same as revenue or usage; a protocol can have high TVL from a few large depositors and still see little daily trading. For example, if a lending platform holds $500 million in deposited ETH and stablecoins across its pools, its TVL is reported as $500 million, updated as prices and deposits shift.