🦙 DeFi TVL & Protocol Tracker — by Category & Chain

Pay-per-result DeFi Total Value Locked (TVL) data — every tracked protocol with TVL, 1d/7d change, market cap, category, and chain, as structured JSON. $0.10 per record. No Nansen subscription, no Messari Enterprise seat, no DefiLlama Pro contract.

Total Value Locked is the headline health metric of decentralized finance: how much capital is actually deposited in a protocol's smart contracts right now, and which direction it is moving. It is the number crypto funds size positions against, the number analysts put in every market report, and the number dashboard builders surface to users. This actor reads the DefiLlama protocol universe and returns each protocol as a discrete JSON record carrying its name, category, chain, current TVL, 1-day and 7-day TVL change, market cap, and a direct link to its DefiLlama page. Filter by category, chain, name, and minimum TVL, sort by whichever momentum metric matters, and feed the result straight into a fund dashboard, a screening pipeline, or a research model.

Why use this

The TVL data is public — DefiLlama is the open standard for DeFi metrics — but turning it into a filterable, repeatable, schema-stable feed is work you would otherwise own. You would build a client against the API, normalize categories and chains, compute or extract the change metrics, page through thousands of protocols, and keep it all running as the source evolves. And if you want a managed, enriched version of this data with no maintenance burden, the commercial alternatives — Nansen, Messari Enterprise, DefiLlama Pro — are priced for funds, not for a single dashboard or a research script.

This actor is the managed feed without the enterprise price tag. You pass filters and a sort; you get back ranked protocol records. Pay-per-result means a tightly filtered query that returns ten protocols costs you for ten records — no subscription, no seat, no minimum. Sort by change_1d or change_7d to surface momentum, set minTvl to drop dust protocols, and constrain to a single chain or category to answer a specific question cheaply.

What you get

Each record is one protocol, structured JSON populated from the DefiLlama universe:

• name — the protocol name (Aave, Lido, Uniswap, etc.)
• category — the protocol category (Lending, Dexes, Liquid Staking, CEX, Yield, etc.)
• chain — the chain (or primary chain) the protocol is deployed on
• tvl — current Total Value Locked, in USD
• change_1d — 1-day change in TVL (percent)
• change_7d — 7-day change in TVL (percent)
• mcap — protocol token market capitalization, in USD (where available)
• defillamaUrl — direct deep link to the protocol's DefiLlama page for verification

The schema is additive-only and stable, so records load straight into a dashboard, a warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, Postgres), or a screening notebook without re-mapping on each refresh.

Use cases

• Fund TVL screening and sizing — Set category=Lending, chain=Ethereum, minTvl=100000000, sort by tvl descending to get every major Ethereum lending protocol ranked by capital, the canonical input to a sector-allocation decision.
• Momentum and flow detection — Sort by change_7d descending to surface the protocols pulling capital fastest this week, or ascending to flag outflows and potential stress — a leading signal for both opportunity and risk desks.
• Category and chain rotation analysis — Pull every protocol in a category across chains, or every protocol on an emerging chain (Base, Solana), to quantify where TVL is rotating and which ecosystems are gaining share.
• Dashboard and product backends — Power a retail-facing DeFi explorer or an internal monitoring board with a scheduled pull, without standing up and maintaining your own DefiLlama client.
• Risk monitoring on concentration — Track the tvl and change_1d of the protocols your fund or treasury is exposed to and alert on sharp single-day drops that may signal an exploit, a depeg, or a bank-run dynamic.
• Research and reporting — Generate the ranked TVL tables that anchor a weekly DeFi market report, filtered to the categories and chains your audience cares about.
• Comparative protocol due diligence — Pull a peer set within a category, line up tvl, mcap, and the change metrics, and compute mcap/TVL ratios for relative-value work.

Sample output

{
  "name": "Aave",
  "category": "Lending",
  "chain": "Ethereum",
  "tvl": 18342000000,
  "change_1d": -1.42,
  "change_7d": 4.87,
  "mcap": 4120000000,
  "defillamaUrl": "https://defillama.com/protocol/aave"
}

Input parameters

Parameter	Label	Description
category	Category	Filter by protocol category (e.g. Lending, Dexes, Liquid Staking, CEX, Yield).
chain	Chain	Only protocols deployed on this chain (e.g. Ethereum, Solana, Base).
nameContains	Name contains	Filter by protocol name substring.
minTvl	Min TVL (USD)	Only protocols with TVL at least this much.
sortBy	Sort by	tvl, change_1d, change_7d, change_1h, or mcap.
descending	Descending	Sort high to low.
maxResults	Max results	Maximum number of protocols to return.

How to use

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")

run = client.actor("nexgendata/defi-tvl-protocol-tracker").call(run_input={
    "category": "Lending",
    "chain": "Ethereum",
    "minTvl": 100000000,
    "sortBy": "tvl",
    "descending": True,
    "maxResults": 50,
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["name"], item["tvl"], item["change_7d"], item["mcap"])

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~defi-tvl-protocol-tracker/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "category": "Lending",
    "chain": "Ethereum",
    "minTvl": 100000000,
    "sortBy": "tvl",
    "descending": true,
    "maxResults": 50
  }'

Results stream into the Apify dataset, exportable as JSON, JSONL, CSV, or Excel. Schedule via Apify's built-in scheduler — an hourly or daily pull keeps a dashboard or a flow-monitor current — and wire a webhook to fire a Slack / Zapier / Make alert on sharp TVL moves.

Pricing

This actor runs on Apify's pay-per-event (PPE) model — you pay for results, not run-time:

• $0.10 per protocol record — the primary event, charged once per protocol pushed to the dataset
• Actor start — a negligible one-time per-run event

No subscriptions, no seat licences, no minimums.

Cost worked example

• Top 50 lending protocols on Ethereum → ~$5
• A 200-protocol cross-category screen → ~$20
• A daily top-25 momentum watch → ~$2.50/day

A filter that matches nothing costs nothing beyond the actor-start event. Apify's free tier covers most experiments. Browse 200+ buyer-intent actors at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b

How this compares to Nansen and Messari

Source	Cost	What you get
Nansen	~$100-$1,800+/month per plan	On-chain analytics, wallet labels, and dashboards; TVL is one feature inside a broad suite
Messari Enterprise	Custom, typically $10K+/year	Research, screeners, and an API behind an enterprise contract
DefiLlama Pro	Subscription (per-key API tiers)	Managed DefiLlama API access; you still build the client and pipeline
DefiLlama (free, DIY)	Free	Raw API; you own the client, normalization, change-metric extraction, and maintenance
DeFi TVL & Protocol Tracker (this actor)	$0.10/protocol, no subscription	Filtered, sorted, structured JSON — name, category, chain, TVL, 1d/7d change, mcap, source URL

If you need wallet-level on-chain analytics, smart-money labels, and a full research workspace, Nansen and Messari earn their price. But if your workflow is TVL screening, momentum/flow detection, or powering a dashboard — and you want ranked protocol records as JSON for cents apiece — this actor is the right cost model.

FAQ

Q: Where does the data come from?

A: DefiLlama, the open standard for DeFi TVL metrics. Each record carries a defillamaUrl linking to the protocol's DefiLlama page for verification.

Q: How current is the TVL?

A: Each run pulls the current values from the source. For live-monitoring use cases, schedule the actor hourly; for research and reporting, a daily run is typically sufficient.

Q: What does the chain field mean for multi-chain protocols?

A: It reflects the chain (or primary chain) the protocol is associated with in the source. Use the chain filter to scope to a single ecosystem when comparing chain-level TVL.

Q: Is mcap always populated?

A: Where the source provides a token market cap it is included; protocols without a liquid governance token, or where the source lacks the figure, return null for mcap.

Q: Can I sort by a metric and also cap results?

A: Yes — set sortBy and descending, then maxResults to keep only the top-N. This is the cheap way to get, say, the 25 fastest-growing protocols this week.

Schema stability & versioning

This actor follows NexGenData's additive-only schema contract. New fields may be added as new keys, defaulting to null for older runs. Existing fields are never renamed or removed without a major-version bump and advance changelog notice. Field semantics — units (USD), change-percent conventions — are never silently changed; a required change adds a new field and keeps the old for at least 90 days. Build a production dashboard or screen on this output without a change breaking your pipeline.

Compliance & legal

• The actor reads public DeFi metrics published by DefiLlama. No authentication, no paywalled content, no credentials are involved.
• Requests are paced politely against the source.
• TVL and market-cap figures are informational market data, not investment advice. Verify any figure against the source defillamaUrl before relying on it for a trade.
• You are responsible for ensuring downstream use complies with the source's terms and your jurisdiction's laws.

Related NexGenData actors

Part of NexGenData's Crypto & Markets intelligence cluster — pair this actor with:

• Stablecoin Supply & Peg Monitor — stablecoin supply and peg-deviation tracking
• Crypto Perp Funding Rates Tracker — perpetual-swap funding rates across venues
• Crypto Top-100 Screener — the top-100 coin universe by market cap
• Polymarket Prediction Markets Tracker — on-chain prediction-market prices
• Kalshi Prediction Markets Tracker — regulated event-contract prices
• Crypto DeFi MCP — model-context-protocol bridge to pull DeFi data from Claude, GPT, and Cursor

Browse the full 200+ actor catalog at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b.