DeFi Tokens Are April's Biggest Losers as Revenues Fall; Memecoins Outperform

April fared relatively well for memecoins, such as dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB), but marked big losses for decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens, including aave (AAVE) and RUNE$0.6472, research by crypto exchange Kraken noted this week.

Considering bitcoin’s (BTC) 17% loss as a benchmark, the broader DeFi sector lost 34% on average, closely followed by tokens of layer 1, or base blockchains, at 33%. DeFi relies on smart contracts instead of third parties to provide financial services, such as trading, lending and borrowing, to users.

DeFi tokens have been the biggest losers on a yearly basis with over 71% in average drawdowns for investors. Ether (ETH), the native token of Ethereum over which most DeFi protocols are built, gained 3% in comparison.

DeFi-centric RUNE slumped 51%, the most in that sector, while the minimum loss was 22%. Among layer 1s, Solana’s SOL, Avalanche’s AVAX, and Near Protocol’s NEAR slumped at least 34% in the past month.

DeFi projects also saw a drop in revenues, which are earned each time a user conducts financial activity on the protocol with the protocol receiving a small cut of volumes as fees. The drop likely occurred as token prices fell and interest among investors took a hit.

Financial services platform SushiSwap saw a 29% drop in revenue, while those on DeFi exchange Balancer fell as much as 66%. Their corresponding tokens, SUSHI and BAL, have lost 45% and 18% over the past month, respectively, CoinGecko data shows.

Curve (CRV) and Uniswap (UNI) were the only DeFi projects to post revenue gains. Curve earned 51% more in April than it did in March, while Uniswap made 13% more. The strong fundamentals failed to attract buyers, however, as CRV and UNI lost 15% and 34%, respectively, in the past month.

Memecoins and exchange tokens were the relative outperformers among crypto sectors. Memecoins lost an average of 19%, while exchange tokens – such as OKX’s OKB and FTX’s FTT – lost just 13% on average. Privacy tokens also outperformed with 16% in gains, buoyed by the likes of Monero XMR$408.62 and Zcash ZEC$465.90.

Meanwhile, trading activity in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) increased in April compared to prior months, even as the number of users remained the same. Average daily volumes bumped 40%, while the average transaction amount increased by the same percentage as well.

Popular Ethereum-based NFT collection CryptoPunks lost favor among investors, slipping to the third spot by market capitalization as the Mutant Ape Yacht Club jumped to second place with a $2 billion capitalization.