MakerDAO Passes $1B Milestone in DeFi First

The total value of cryptocurrency locked in decentralized finance's (DeFi) oldest project has surpassed $1 billion for the first time.

• MakerDAO, which is also the sector's largest protocol by a margin of $271 million locked in, crossed above $1 billion at around 18:00 UTC on Sunday, according to analytics aggregator DeFi Pulse.
• The milestone, which represents how much money has been committed and not earned, demonstrates a rising interest in MakerDao and DeFi projects alike.
• Collateral, locked up in the form of ether (ETH) or basic attention token (BAT), is used on Maker's protocol to undertake lending and generate DAI as debt against collateral.
• Saying the news marked a "big day" for MakerDAO, David Freuden, co-author of "DAO: A Decentralized Governance Layer for the Internet of Value," told CoinDesk that innovation in DeFi will increasingly challenge the premise of centralized finance.
• Maker's dominance over other projects in the sector stands at 27.1%, with the highly valued Compound protocol coming in second place at around $729 million total value locked up.
• The DeFi industry has seen a significant rise in total value locked up with the sector's $1 billion milestone in all protocols having been surpassed on Feb. 7, now up by more than $3.3 billion at time of writing.

See also: Mempool Manipulation Enabled Theft of $8M in MakerDAO Collateral on Black Thursday: Report