A quick look at loyalty in the largest DeFi protocols

The growing popularity of DeFi has led to tens or even hundreds of thousands of unique addresses interacting with the largest protocols. The new users that arrived were, most of the time, evenly distributed, except for some events that increased interest in specific projects. These include significant protocol updates (like Maker MCD) and token distributions (CRV launch).

The most popular token distribution methods were liquidity mining incentives and airdrops. In most cases, the primary purpose of tokens is protocol governance and revenue sharing. Through governance features, protocols were able to, at the very least, create an illusion of a token's usefulness. At the same time, revenue sharing has not been activated in some DeFi projects due to potential regulatory consequences, while others want to maximize their userbase first.