Here’s Why Gauntlet’s TVL is Up Over $550M in 24 Hours

Gauntlet, a decentralized yield curator for institutional clients, has emerged as the top project with the highest increase in total value locked (TVL) over the past 24 hours.

According to on-chain data from DefiLlama, the project amassed a TVL of over $550 million, representing a whopping 58.2% surge in just a day. This brings its current TVL to approximately $1.5 billion.

The mind-boggling question is, what triggered such a surge within a short span?

Gauntlet Rakes in $550M+

Gauntlet’s surge came following its partnership with Lista DAO, a liquid staking protocol on BNB Chain. The latter selected Gauntlet to curate four lending vaults on the layer-1 BNB Chain.

Positioned as one of the largest lending markets on the BNB Chain, Lista Lending enables decentralized lending through a vault-based system. This implies that users can access collateralized lending through isolated smart contract-enabled vaults instead of having them in one large pool.

The vaults, managed by curators, are separated based on specific loan assets, such as USDT or lisUSD.

In the latest announcement, Gauntlet was named the primary curator for one of the four lending vaults: the Gauntlet USDT Vault. It will also serve as a co-curator alongside Lista DAO for the Gauntlet × Lista USD1, BNB, and U Vaults.

Lista Lending’s page shows that $6.8 million has been deposited into the Gauntlet USDT Vault. The USD1, BNB, and U Vaults have raked in $138.51 million, $308.59 million, and $69.32 million, respectively. These deposits have rubbed off on Gauntlet’s TVL record.

It is worth noting that a large chunk of Gauntlet’s entire $550 million came from its services on the BNB Chain.

This is Gauntlet’s first foray into the BNB Chain. Following this integration, Gauntlet supports 10 different blockchains, including Ethereum, Base, Unichain, Solana, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Katana.

Looking more closely at Gauntlet’s latest, a broader structural driver emerges: capital is rotating into parts of the DeFi sector that do not rely on reflexive collateral loops, as seen with the troubled KelpDAO, which suffered a $292 million hack earlier this month. Users are now more comfortable with preofessionally managed, risk-curated vaults offered by protocols, such as Gauntlet.

Not the First Time

Interestingly, this is not the first time Gauntlet has experienced a massive uptrend in TVL. In late October 2025, the DeFi curator saw a $775 million surge in TVL within a 24-hour timeframe. This pump represented a 40x increase.

At the time, Gauntlet onboarded the OP Mainnet and became compatible with lending protocols built on the layer-2 network, such as Morpho.

Closer Look at Gauntlet

Founded in June 2018, Gauntlet is a yield curator that combines quantitative research and risk management to offer optimized strategies within decentralized markets to capital allocators, fintechs, financial institutions, and others. Its goal is to enable users to make the most out of decentralized finance (DeFi).

The project’s services include various yield-optimized services, such as earning, lending, and restaking.

The project also blurs the boundary between traditional finance (TradFi) and DeFi by enabling users to bring real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain and put them to work within the Gauntlet Vault through its Levered RWA Strategy.

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