DeFi adoption by country

The use of decentralized finance, or DeFi, was highest in countries that traded or moved large amounts of cryptocurrencies, including the U.S., and China. This is a different conclusion when compared to a country ranking on cryptocurrency ownership worldwide: consumers from developing countries where much more likely to own crypto than those from developed countries. The figures shown here might therefore suggest that in countries like the United States, China, the UK, and India cryptocurrencies mostly receive attention from traders and institutional investors - and DeFi is means to either get access to crypto or to move them around.

Index of the 20 countries with the highest interaction with DeFi platforms worldwide between April 2019 and June 2021

Characteristic	Index score (calculated from 3 country rankings)	Country ranking: on-chain DeFi value received	Country ranking: on-chain number of DeFi deposits	Country ranking: on-chain retail DeFi value received
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Release date

August 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

April 2019 to June 2021

Special properties

The source does not explain how it collected the data, although it suggests it is based off web traffic towards DeFi protocols. Seemingly, it then cross referenced the web visits with the IP addresses of where this traffic came from.

Supplementary notes

The source states it ranked 154 countries worldwide according to three metrics, then took the geometric mean, to finally normalize this on a scale from 0 to 1. The closer the country's final score is to 1, the higher the rank. It provides the following information on the three components used to calculate the index score:

Component 1: On-chain cryptocurrency value received by DeFi platforms weighted by PPP per capita: "The goal of this metric is to rank each country by total DeFi activity, but weight the rankings to favor countries where that amount is more significant based on the wealth of the average person and value of money generally within the country. We calculate the metric by estimating total cryptocurrency received by DeFi protocols from users in a given country, and weighting the on-chain value based on PPP per capita, which is a measure of the country’s wealth per resident. The higher the ratio of on-chain value received to PPP per capita, the higher the ranking, meaning that if two countries sent equal amounts to DeFi protocols, the country with the lower PPP per capita would rank ahead."
Component 2: Individual deposits to DeFi platforms: "The goal of this metric is to rank countries based on whose residents are carrying out the highest number of DeFi transactions. We measure this by taking the ratio of DeFi transactions to the country’s total number of internet users. The higher the ratio, the higher the ranking, meaning that if two countries had an equal number of deposits, the country with fewer internet users would rank higher."
Component 3: Total retail value received by DeFi platforms : "The goal of this metric is to measure the DeFi activity of non-professional, individual cryptocurrency users, based on how much cryptocurrency they’ve sent to DeFi protocols in retail-sized transactions, meaning under $10,000 USD, compared to the wealth of the average person. We then rank each country according to this metric but weight it to favor countries with a lower PPP per capita."

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