𝗢𝘅𝘆𝗴𝗲𝗻

Since 2018, we been tracking projects by TVL. The first TVL was locked on @ethereum just $30m Nobody thought that day that this one number would later become the scoreboard of the entire industry Then 2021 came. In November, DeFi's TVL was around $175b. Today, on 7 November 2026, DeFi's TVL is $80.88b. That's more than half down from the peak But the money hasn't disappeared. What has shrunk is the money sitting locked. Where there's real usage, money is still moving @base tells the same story. It started in August 2023 with just $8m, and today its TVL is $5.76b. In under three and a half years, that's roughly 720x We all look at this TVL and say Base is growing. But in banking language, a deposit is a liability, and in crypto we call that a milestone. If another chain offers 2% more APY, this money can move there the very next day So for me, Base's real scoreboard is three numbers- fees, revenue, retention In the last 30 days, Base's Chain Fees were $2.56m and App Fees were $55m. Next to a $5.76b TVL, the app layer number isn't that bad 100 users who actually pay fees are better than $50M locked, money that's just waiting for a use case Base is still building adoption without a token. If a token and airdrop come in the future, the real test will be how many stay after the airdrop. Because retention is a metric you can't fake with subsidies So in my view, when you look at any protocol, instead of looking at TVL first, it's most important to look at revenue and active users 30 days later TVL tells you how much the protocol has borrowed from strangers and revenue tells you whether it actually has a business