November 23, 2025
'Liquidity Crisis': $12B in DeFi Liquidity Sits Idle as 95% of Capital Goes Unused thumbnail
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‘Liquidity Crisis’: $12B in DeFi Liquidity Sits Idle as 95% of Capital Goes Unused

This inefficiency disproportionately affects retail liquidity providers, with 50% losing money due to impermanent loss, and net deficits exceeding $60 million, a new report finds.”, — write: www.coindesk.com

This inefficiency disproportionately affects retail liquidity providers, with 50% losing money due to impermanent loss, and net deficits exceeding $60 million, a new report finds.Updated Nov 22, 2025, 7:31 pm Published Nov 22, 2025, 4:07 pm

A new report from decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch has shown a growing crisis in decentralized finance (DeFi): the vast majority of capital deployed in major DeFi liquidity pools is not being used effectively.

According to data presented at Devconnect Buenos Aires, between 83% and 95% of liquidity in top pools, including Uniswap v2, v3, and v4, as well as Curve, remains idle for most of the year. That means billions of dollars sit in smart contracts without earning fees or generating meaningful returns.

In Uniswap v2 alone, only 0.5% of liquidity typically falls within active trading price ranges, rendering nearly $1.8 billion ineffective according to the report.

This inefficiency hits retail participants the hardest. Research cited in the report shows that 50% of liquidity providers (LPs) are losing money when factoring in impermanent loss, with net liquidity provider deficits exceeding $60 million. In one notable example, a single Uniswap v3 pool saw over $30 million in lost profits due to Just-in-Time liquidity manipulation.

Part of the problem stems from the sheer number of fragmented pools, with more than seven million across the ecosystem. This complexity not only dilutes liquidity but also makes it harder to route trades efficiently, further reducing returns for liquidity providers.

‘New approach’To 1inch, the solution is its Aqua protocol, which is designed to let DeFi applications share the same capital base across multiple strategies without compromising user custody.

“We address this problem by introducing a new approach,” 1inch cofounder Segej Kunz told CoinDesk in an interview at Devconnect Buenos Aires. “We allow people to just keep assets in the wallet, and we allow people to create virtual trading positions.”

To Kunz, the current situation constitutes a “DeFi liquidity crisis.”

The protocol also aims to lower the barrier to entry for developers who want to utilize this deep liquidity. “Any existing DEX right now can be implemented under 10 lines of code,” Kunz added, noting that the goal is to provide “a foundation to build on top” so that liquidity providers can “hold assets in the wallet” rather than locking them inside complex protocol contracts.

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What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence’s Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025, with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
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(Clint Patterson/Unsplash/modified by CoinDesk)The attack did not compromise the underlying smart contracts, but users are advised to avoid the compromised domains and instead use decentralized ENS domains.

What to know:

  • Aerodrome Finance, a decentralized exchange on Coinbase’s Base network, was targeted in a front-end attack, with attackers using DNS hijacking to reroute users to phishing sites.
  • The attack did not compromise the underlying smart contracts, but users are advised to avoid the compromised domains and instead use decentralized ENS mirrors to access the protocol.
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