Ether Outperforms DeFi Market in May, Bouncing From Woeful Start to the Year

Ether ETH has increased in value by 45% over the past 30 days, outperforming the decentralized finance (DeFi) market and bitcoin, which are up 21% and 13% respectively in the same period.

Much of ether's rise has been attributed to institutional interest that has led to record inflows from spot ETH ETFs.

ETH's rise came after a lull in sentiment earlier this year as rival layer-1 blockchains like Solana took the limelight with a flurry of memecoin releases.

At the turn of the year ETH was trading at $3,340 however by early April it had tumbled to as low as $1,472 amid global uncertainty related to U.S. tariffs.

But now, as documented in an article by CoinDesk analyst Omkar Godbole on Thursday, ether has finally broken an 18-month downtrend against Solana as it begins to wrangle back control of the DeFi market.

It appears that much of that appetite is related to yields -- DefiLlama data shows that TVL on restaking protocols like Lido, EigenLayer and Ether.fi have all risen by between 41% and 48% this month, while Binance's staked ether product has experienced a 63% jump in TVL.

The Solana-based DeFi protocols, however, have failed to keep pace with those on Ethereum. Jupiter's and Kamino's TVL have risen by just 7% and 9% while liquid staking protocol Marinade has seen TVL increase by 29%.

Ether's recent performance marks a significant recovery from earlier this year, with increased institutional interest and strong growth in DeFi protocols contributing to its rise.