---
title: "TVL (Total Value Locked)"
url: "https://www.unknowngravity.com/en/glosario/tvl-valor-total-bloqueado"
site: Unknown Gravity
published: "2026-09-21T11:55:12+00:00"
modified: "2026-09-21T11:55:14+00:00"
language: en-US
description: "TVL (total value locked) measures how much money is deposited in a protocol: collateral, liquidity, staking. It is the most quoted thermometer of DeFi and RWA — useful as an order of magnitude…"
section: "Home > TVL (Total Value Locked)"
---

# TVL (Total Value Locked)

GLOSSARY · BLOCKCHAIN & WEB3

What TVL (total value locked) is: how much value is deposited in a protocol, how it is measured, what it is for and its traps as a metric.

WHAT IS IT? · FOR DUMMIES

**TVL** (total value locked) measures how much money is deposited in a protocol: collateral, liquidity, staking. It is the most quoted thermometer of DeFi and RWA — useful as an order of magnitude, treacherous as an exact figure.

WHAT IS IT? · PRO

TVL adds up the market value of deposited assets, which makes it sensitive to prices (the token rises, TVL "rises" without a euro coming in), to double counting between stacked protocols and to mercenary liquidity that arrives with incentives and leaves with them. Comparing TVL between protocols requires looking at the methodology — just as we do with tokenized-asset figures, where aggregators such as RWA.xyz publish theirs, as we tell in the analysis of [Ondo](/en/articulos/ondo-finance-ondo-explained).

Well used, TVL answers one concrete question: how much real economic trust does this protocol carry? — and its trend says more than its level.

## 01 / Key points

- Market value of the assets deposited in a protocol
- Sensitive to prices, double counting and incentivised liquidity
- Comparing requires a consistent methodology
- The trend tells more than the absolute level

## 02 / Advantages

- Quick thermometer of economic adoption
- Verifiable on-chain with public aggregators
- De facto standard for comparing protocols

## 03 / Disadvantages

- Inflates and deflates with prices without real flows
- Double counting between composed protocols
- Mercenary liquidity: TVL rented with incentives

This entry is informative. It is not legal, tax or investment advice. The rules cited change: check the current version on [BOE](https://www.boe.es) and [EUR-Lex](https://eur-lex.europa.eu).