The report said broad on-chain weakness hit DeFi and major blockchains, while RWAs and prediction markets grew and corporate treasury firms overtook spot ETFs as the largest ETH holders.
Decentralized finance contracted sharply in the first half of 2026 as broader on-chain weakness, rather than capital rotating between blockchains, weighed on the market, Binance Research said. DeFi total value locked fell by $43.4 billion, or 38%, while the combined market capitalization of the six major Layer 1 blockchains covered in the report dropped by $246.5 billion, or 42%. Ethereum and Solana both posted weaker network economics: spot Ethereum ETF holdings declined from more than 6 million ETH to 5.2 million, while digital asset treasury companies increased their ETH holdings from 6 million to 7.7 million, overtaking spot ETFs. Ethereum’s gas fees fell about 75% from 2025 levels after its gas limit rose to around 60 million, transaction count increased about 50%, yet revenue is projected to fall about 53% this year if conditions persist. Layer 2 user operations fell about 77% between January and June, versus a 9% decline on Ethereum mainnet, and in June L2s collected around $15 million in fees while paying Ethereum $66,397 for data availability. On Solana, real economic value dropped from $40 million in January to $14 million in June as Pump.fun trading volume fell from $30 billion to $17 billion, although memecoins still made up 25% of Solana DEX volume in June. BNB Chain stood out with 107% growth in tokenized real-world assets to $3.8 billion and remained the only major Layer 1 with a deflationary token. Security incidents added to the DeFi slump, with 207 incidents causing about $972 million in losses, while RWAs and prediction markets were among the few areas that continued to expand.