DeFi Pulse

Basics

Started in: February of 2019
Based in: USA, EU

History

DeFi Pulse is the company which invented and popularized the term Total Value Locked (TVL). The term has become an industry standard way to describe fiat investment in the DeFi space.

After inception of the DeFi List TVL Leaderboard, many entities (crypto projects, DAOs, DeFI protocols) adopted the term and began voluntarily reporting TVL numbers. DeFi Pulse is now one of many TVL tracking services, some of which forked the DeFi Pulse TVL adapters.

DeFi List Leaderboard

DeFi Pulse continually curates TVL metrics for projects on their DeFi List. Their DeFi List is nearly always displays lower TVL than other trackers because it applies various validations, such as excluding governance tokens, and disallowing double-counted holdings.

Tech

Code can be viewed at https://github.com/defi-pulse-adapters.
Programming language used: Node.js

Historical Details

Industry Wide TVL
- December 2018: $7 billion
- December 2019: $10 billion
- December 2020: $25 billion
- December 2021: $100 billion

Their Other Projects

Yield Farmer

Also has a Yield Farming newsletter, called DeFi Pulse Farmer (10-8-2020).
Get sponsored by BarnBridge (24-10-2020). And DEXTF and Alpha Finance (7-11-2020).

Indices

Created DeFi Pulse Index fund of decentralized finance protocols, which is frequently rebalanced based on the DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) List.
Hold INDEX Coop governance token together with TokenSets.
Maintains many other DeFi Indices and leverage instruments via PulseInc.

DeFi Pulse Economic Safety Grade

Works together with Gauntlet on a grading system, DeFi Pulse Economic Safety Grade, to measure the risk of DeFi projects (14-10-2020):

"The DeFi Pulse Economic Safety Grade measures the risk of protocols becoming insolvent—that is, when the value of contributed collateral is less than the total value of all loans that have been issued. If a protocol becomes insolvent, users that have contributed cryptocurrency to be used by the project are at risk of getting back less crypto then they put in, or, in a worst-case scenario, none at all.

Grades have been assigned to two DeFi projects so far, lending services Compound and Aave, which earned a 91% and a 95%, respectively."

Governance

INDEX Coop
Privately owned corporation

Upgrades

Roadmap

Can be found [Insert link here].

Audits

Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].

Bugs

Usage

Projects that use or built on it

DeFi Llama is a hard fork of DeFi Pulse's adapters. Rather than leveraging exclusively on-chain data, this project allows a project to provide an arbitrary API un-curated data feed.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Widely seen as a standard in the industry and popularised the TVL metric.

Cons

The curated nature of the DeFi List means it has been slower to onboard and validate TVL for new projects.
A feud with between a DeFi Pulse founder and a 1inch founder caused 1inch to be temporarily not included on the DeFi Leaderboard, even as 1inch gained significant marketshare and TVL.

Competition

DeFi Llama

Coin Distribution

Team, investors, Partnerships, etc.

Team

Scott Lewis; founder

Investors

Partners

Is a member of DeFi Nation, created by Mosendo (24-5-2020)
Partners with Set (14-9-2020). They together created the DeFi Pulse Index TokenSet.
On the website of Opium Protocol it is mentioned as one of its partners (7-3-2021).
Concourse Open Community