Ink, a Layer 2 (L2) blockchain launched by U.S. crypto exchange Kraken in December 2024, saw its total value locked (TVL) surge by nearly 3,800% in less than two weeks, climbing from $6.42 million on Oct. 15 to nearly $249 million as of press time.
Ink TVL. Source: DefiLlama
However, data from DefiLlama shows that out of 30 protocols deployed on Ink, more than 97% of this sharp increase came from a single product, Tydro, a non-custodial lending protocol built by the Ink Foundation, as a white label instance of open-source DeFi giant Aave.
The Ink Foundation announced the launch of Tydro on Oct. 15, calling the protocol Ink’s “native liquidity layer,” and revealing that it would also be directly integrated into Kraken.
The data further suggests that the spike in TVL followed shortly after Tydro’s launch and was amplified by a nine-figure stablecoin mint from USDT0, a cross-chain version of USDT.
Markets on Tydro. Source: Tydro
As of press time, Tydro’s total market size of deployed assets exceeds $350 million, including $108 million in borrowed assets and $243.55 million in supply.
The highest supply APY on the protocol, currently 1.84%, isn’t offered on USDT0 but on USDG, a stablecoin issued by regulated fintech Paxos and backed by a consortium including Kraken, Robinhood, Anchorage Digital, Bullish, and Galaxy Digital.
Ink protocols by weekly revenue. Source: DefiLlama
As a result, Tydro, which currently supports only five markets — ETH, USDT0, USDG, KBTC and GHO — became the second-largest protocol on Ink in terms of weekly revenue, generating $3,179 since launch, next only to Velodrome, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, which boasts over $21,000 in weekly revenue.
Despite the parabolic TVL expansion, network activity on Ink, which is built on Optimism’s Superchain, has been trending downward. The number of daily active addresses has declined steadily from its March 24 peak of 127,100 users to around 60,300 for the past week, a drop of more than 50%, according to data from Token Terminal. The fall across user activity also transformed into falling network revenue, which has dropped to under $500 in daily fees recently, with a total revenue of $11,600 in the past month.