Total Value Locked (TVL)

Total value locked, often shortened to TVL, is the total value of assets deposited in a decentralized finance protocol at a given moment. It counts the crypto that users have supplied to a protocol's smart contracts, such as funds lent into a lending market, added to a liquidity pool, or staked. Figures are usually expressed in a common currency like US dollars so protocols can be compared.

People use TVL as a rough measure of a protocol's size and adoption. A higher figure means more assets are committed to that protocol at that time.

TVL moves for two reasons. It rises or falls as users deposit or withdraw assets, and it shifts when the prices of those assets change. So a change in TVL does not always reflect a change in user activity. It is one metric among several and does not on its own measure safety or returns.