A Quick Guide to Ethereum Protocol Forks

The top DeFi protocols on Ethereum have captured billions of TVL and generated offspring that have captured billions more.

Uniswap, Compound, Olympus DAO, Aave

‍“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” – Oscar Wilde

Snarkiness aside, any good developer understands it’s far less efficient to build from scratch, than to identify existing good code and to adapt it to their purposes. The world of crypto is filled with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols that are based on forks of predecessors.

Unsurprisingly, Ethereum protocols are the most popular models for other platforms to follow. In many cases, the Total Value Locked (TVL) of the offspring exceeds the parents!

Let’s check out the top 4 Ethereum protocols, in terms of the adoption of their forks, and then also look at one wild-card protocol: Uniswap, Compound, Olympus DAO, AAVE and Solidly.

(All data sourced from DefiLlama.)

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1. Uniswap

Name: Uniswap

Category: DEX

TVL: $3.78 billion

Most Popular Forks: PancakeSwap (BNB etc.), SushiSwap (ETH etc.), BiSwap (BNB), VVS Finance (Cronos), Quickswap DEX (Polygon), Camelot (Arbitrum), SpookySwap (Fantom)

Total TVL of Forks: $6.92 billion

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2. Compound Finance

Name: Compound Finance

Category: Lending

TVL: $2.67 billion

Most Popular Forks: Venus (BNB), Tectonic (Cronos), Benqui Lending (Avalanche), Sonne Finance (Optimism), Mare Finance (Kava)

Total TVL of Forks: $4.56 billion

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3. Olympus DAO

Name: Olympus DAO

Category: Reserve Currency

TVL: $253 million

Most Popular Forks: Wonderland (Avalanche, ETH), Klima DAO (Polygon)

Total TVL of Forks: $1.51 billion

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4. AAVE

Name: AAVE

Category: Lending

TVL: $8.53 billion

Most Popular Forks: UwU Lend (ETH), Geist Finance (Fantom), Radiant (Arbitrum)

Total TVL of Forks: $830 million

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The only DeFi protocol in the top 5 that was not originally on Ethereum is Solidly, which was launched by famed DeFi developer Andre Cronje on Fantom. Solidly’s TVL on Fantom experienced a meteoric rise and equally meteoric fall, but the protocol has spun off several massively popular protocols on other blockchains.

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Solidly

Name: Solidly

Category: DEX

TVL: $1.5 million

Most Popular Forks: Velodrome (Optimism), Solidly V2 (ETH), Thena (BNB), Ramses Exchange (Arbitrum), Equalizer Exchange (Fantom), Solid Lizard (Arbitrum), Equilibre (Kava)

Total TVL of Forks: $863 million

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What is Ethereum:

Ethereum is an open-source, distributed computing platform based on blockchain technology that can execute smart contracts – that is, the terms written in the contract will be executed transparently, automatically when the previous conditions are satisfied, and no one can interfere. At the same time, Ethereum also allows developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).

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Find more about Ethereum here:

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