At most, four services control the majority of any DeFi sector
It’s debatable whether decentralized finance (DeFi) was ever decentralized — but there’s no doubt that it has become more centralized this year. Crypto research firm Gauntlet’s new research has detailed this rapid centralization of DeFi. First, Gauntlet identified various sectors of DeFi, such as liquid stakers, yield aggregators, DEXs, bridges, synthetics, and so on. It then counted how many protocols controlled a majority of those sectors’ market shares. Researchers didn’t need to count very high. In the 12 sectors of DeFi, just four DeFi projects apiece control a majority of their sector’s market . The most decentralized DeFi sector is DEXs, where only four projects control 54% market share. Sectors only get more centralized from there. For example, just four liquid stakers control 90% of that sector. Cross-blockchain bridges as a sector is just as centralized: 89% of market share controlled by four bridges. As another example, two-thirds of DeFi y...