Want to find truly reliable projects in the DeFi space? Instead of blindly following the trend, it’s better to focus on top projects that have long-term leading protocol lock-up volume (TVL).

Why are established names like Uniswap (UNI) and Aave (AAVE) worth paying attention to? Because their TVL has consistently ranked among the top, what does that indicate? It shows that the market has voted with real money. Long-term capital accumulation reflects the actual application value of the ecosystem and user trust, which are difficult for newly launched projects to build in a short period.

In contrast, those emerging DeFi tokens, although they may have compelling stories, lack time-tested validation and genuine fund lock-up data to support them. Choosing projects with solid fundamentals is essentially about speaking with data and historical performance, rather than betting on hype or concept speculation. Look at TVL, ecosystem maturity, operational performance—these are the key indicators to determine whether a DeFi project is trustworthy.