MetisDAO TVL surges by 99,800% as the layer-2 race heats up

Attracting liquidity has become a de facto arms race in the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape. Projects constantly battle to attract investors funds by offering enticing yields for crypto holders willing to take a risk and lock up their assets and protocols use this funds to build out their products and attract attention from larger investors. 

One protocol that has been gaining traction in the total value locked (TVL) race is MetisDAO (METIS), a layer-two rollup platform designed to fully support the application and business migration from Web2 to Web3.

Alongside the growth in the TVL on its protocol, the METIS token has also received a boost of momentum with data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and CoinGecko showing that the price of METIS climbed from a low of $49.83 on Dec. 14 to a new all-time high at $323.54 on Jan. 16.

Three reasons for the growing TVL on the Metis protocol include the launch of multiple DeFi protocols on the network, added support for METIS-based trading pairs on cross-chain protocols and the network’s ability to offer Etherum users lower transaction costs and faster processing times.

Multiple DeFi protocols launch on Metis

The largest boost in value on Metis comes from the launch of several new DeFi protocols that are exclusively on the Metis network. These include NetSwap (NETT), Agora (AGORA) and Tethys Finance (TETHYS).

Together, these three protocols account for $325.24 million out of the $353.36 million in value currently locked on Metis.

The partnership between METIS and Agora was only revealed on Jan. 19, meaning that it only took two days for the current TVL to be reached. This suggests that the overall TVL on the Metis chain will soon be headed higher.

NetSwap (NETT) is the longest-running protocol on METIS, having conducted its fair launch on Dec. 6, 2021, it currently offers APRs for liquidity providers (LP) that range from 56% for WETH/m.USDT to 1,034% for BNB/NETT LPs. NetSwap reached a total trading volume of $1 billion on Jan. 19 which represents $2.5 million worth of transaction fees that have been rewarded to LP providers.

Cross-chain bridge support

A second reason for the growing value hosted on the Metis network includes the added support from multiple cross-chain bridges that provide wider exposure to the Metis ecosystem.

Beefy Finance is one of the larger protocols that has added support for Metis-based tokens including METIS, NETT, and Metis-based versions of Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC) and Wrapped Ethereum (WETH).

Welcome @MetisDAO to the Beefy family!https://t.co/A5bk5ZNAaE is building a hub for the Web3 economy: Layer 2 #Ethereum scaling with fast and cheap transactions. #Metis is live on Beefy with 11 @netswapofficial vaults.Check Metis Vaults at https://t.co/pJcEr4tgoG pic.twitter.com/MEu61vCYB1

Since announcing the partnership on Jan. 16, the TVL from the Metis network on Beefy Finance has reached $24.56 million.

Other cross-chain platforms that have added support for Metis include Pickle Finance, Poly Network, the Celer Network’s cBridge, BoringDAO, Relay Chain and Multichain.

Related: Blockchain assessment: How to assess different chains?

Metis goes cross-chain

The third factor attracting value to the Metis ecosystem is the low-fee, high throughput capabilities of the network that help Ethereum users save time and money.

The overall goal of Metis is to offer transactions that settle in less than a second and cost less than $1 in fees. According to the project’s whitepaper, this will be achieved by using the theoretically infinite scalability of the Metis Andromeda network.

These capabilities have led to the rapid growth of the Metis ecosystem as a whole, which now supports multiple DeFi protocols and NFT projects.

Most recently, Metis has established a partnership with Curate, a cross-chain nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace that will enable gasless transactions.

New partner: @curateproject! Curate is a cross-chain NFT marketplace allowing anyone to mint & buy/sell NFTs completely GASLESS(!), incl import/export of ETH/SOL/ALGO/BSC NFTs! Curate will deploy on $METIS Andromeda network end of Jan. https://t.co/sbX71ooYGc to get started! pic.twitter.com/ONGHiCJM6M

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