Rampant DeFi speculation makes DEXs the undisputed winners of Q3 2020

While it might seem that DeFi reached its bottom during Q3 2020, the sector still closed the last quarter with incredible performance.

Few of its aspects did as well as decentralized exchanges did, according to the latest report form Messari, which saw a significant increase in on-chain trading due to heightened speculation around yield farming DeFi projects.

The newest darling of the crypto industry, DeFi, has seen a fair share of ups and downs in its lifetime, but few of them could even come close to the turmoil the sector experienced this summer.

While at certain points it seemed that DeFi simultaneously reached both its top and its bottom, the latest report from crypto analytics company Messari showed that DeFi had actually seen its heyday last quarter.

Messari's report, analyzing the DeFi sector in Q3 2020, noted that the farming craze and rampant speculation on governance tokens recorded in the past few months meant that "People were making money hand over fist."

With most DeFi tokens now down around 50 percent from their Q3 highs, Messari's report begs the question-who profited the most from the craze?

The DeFi craze essentially left centralized exchanges obsolete.

The rise in popularity protocols like Uniswap saw meant most users gravitated towards DEXs rather than centralized exchanges, as they enabled a faster and more streamlined way to interact with DeFi.

While some might dismiss DeFi's dizzying ups and downs as nothing more than speculation fueled by hype, Messari noted that dismissing the sector altogether is a shortsighted mistake.

The "DeFi summer" saw a significant number of innovative projects launched that are bound to survive DeFi's tumultuous hype cycles, no matter how many of them they encounter.