DefiLlama

DefiLlama is a public dashboard of on-chain money. Its headline number is TVL, the value users have deposited into a protocol's own contracts, but the site has grown into a set of separate datasets that people use for very different jobs. On 27 September 2026 its API listed 8,386 protocols and 467 chains, and its stablecoin tracker counted about $311.6 billion of USD-pegged supply.

No account is needed to read any of it. The site is operated by LlamaCorp, which also runs Chainlist (RPC endpoints for EVM networks) and LlamaPay (streamed crypto payroll). The pseudonymous developer 0xngmi has been the public face of the project since it launched in late 2020.

DefiLlama's numbers travel well beyond its own site. TradingView lists DefiLlama as one of its fundamental-data providers for crypto, and news desks, ours included, cite its TVL and hacks figures as a neutral baseline. We use it the same way in our trading tools rating.

DefiLlama defines TVL as the value locked inside a protocol's own contracts by users. Each protocol gets an adapter, a small script in the public DefiLlama-Adapters repository on GitHub that reads balances from the chain. Projects get listed by opening a pull request with their adapter; the docs describe no listing fee, and the UI updates within about 24 hours of a merge.

What makes the headline figure comparable is what it leaves out by default. Each of these can be toggled back on in the site settings:

Off-chain assets such as bonds or fiat are excluded, and when one protocol's receipt token is deposited into another, it counts toward the second. This is why DefiLlama's figure for a protocol is often lower than the one on the protocol's own homepage. When they disagree, the adapter code shows which side is including what.

The weakness is lag. A newly launched protocol can appear late, because somebody has to write and merge its adapter first. Disputes over what should count are raised as issues and pull requests in the public repository, which is more than most data vendors offer.

Reading the site is free, and so is a basic public API (api.llama.fi) that returns protocol, chain and stablecoin data without a key. In 2025 DefiLlama added paid layers on top. Prices from its documentation on 27 September 2026:

LlamaAI, launched on 7 November 2025, turns a plain-English question into a query over DefiLlama's datasets and returns charts you can export. Pro subscribers get five questions a day; signed-in free users can try a few suggested ones. Payment is accepted in crypto or by card.

The paid tiers change the site's pitch somewhat. For years the argument for trusting DefiLlama was that it had nothing to sell. The core numbers are still free and still computed by open adapters, so that argument mostly holds, but the premium features are now a revenue line the company depends on.

DefiLlama belongs to LlamaCorp. Its public team page names 0xngmi and Charlie as co-founders, along with a managing director and a marketing chief. The company does not publish a country of incorporation, and we could not confirm one.

The project's only serious public crisis was about a token. On 19 March 2023, 0xngmi said the person who controlled DefiLlama's Twitter account and domain was pushing a LLAMA token that the rest of the team did not want, and announced a fork at llama.fi. LlamaCorp's side accused 0xngmi of trying to seize the brand. The next day both sides called it a misunderstanding, the fork was cancelled, and the team stated there was no LLAMA token planned.

We found no token launch since. Anything sold as a DefiLlama or LLAMA token is not issued by the company. That makes "airdrop" messages using the DefiLlama name a common phishing lure, the same trick that hit the X accounts and mailing lists of other analytics firms.

Recent product news: a Pro dashboard (mid-2025), LlamaAI (November 2025), and continued quarterly reports on hacks and funding rounds that other outlets quote.