2025 was the year onchain yield grew up (and got more complicated).
If 2024 was about the resurgence of DeFi, 2025 was defined by yield source diversity.
The "risk-free" baseline of ETH staking and Aave V3 deposits remains, but the landscape has fractured into a complex ecosystem of onchain credit, curator-managed vaults, restaking layers, and managed looping products.
The paradox of 2025: Onchain yield got so much better that it actually got worse for the manual allocator. The sheer volume of choice created a "paradox of choice" that penalized those without the time or tools to monitor it.
Lazy Summer Protocol was built for exactly this moment. Below, we look at the 75,021 automated rebalance actions that defined the year, and what they reveals about the new state of DeFi.
https://summer.fi/earn/rebalance-activity
In previous years, onchain yield was often treated as a monolith. Deploy into AAVE or Compound, capture the DAI savings rate and call it a day. In 2025, the market matured into three distinct, non-correlated pillars. The data shows clear fragmented, volatile and competitive behavior across each:
1. The yield bearing stablecoin flight to quality 2025 was a stress test for yield-bearing stables. We saw a decisive "flight to quality"
https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/yield-bearing-stablecoins#key-stats