As the crypto market stumbles into another sharp correction, with ETH dipping below 1,400 USD and SOL breaking under 100 USD. Many investors are pulling back, waiting for signs of life before jumping in again. Trading volumes fall, memecoin hype fades, and DeFi protocols struggle to maintain TVL. But for seasoned observers, this phase isn’t a time to retreat; it’s a time to quietly identify the builders.

Two such protocols, Aave and Jupiter, are often mentioned in passing due to their past success. But look a little closer, and you’ll see that they are far from fading away. In fact, they may be laying the groundwork for some of the strongest comebacks in the next market cycle. One represents the bedrock of decentralized lending across Ethereum and its Layer 2. The other is the liquidity engine driving Solana’s DeFi resurgence.

Let’s examine how each is enduring the downturn and why both could prosper in the future, becoming a leading protocol in the battle between Ethereum and Solana.

Aave: Building a Fortress in the Bear

Even in a Downturn, Aave Remains DeFi’s Trusted Bank

The market conditions are challenging: the demand for borrowing has decreased, stablecoins have exited DeFi protocols, and all yields are declining. Aave – one of the largest and most established lending platforms in the space, has not been immune. Its total value locked (TVL) has slipped from highs over $16 billion to around $11 billion by mid-2024.

Yet that number is still impressive. Aave hasn’t suffered any major smart contract exploits, liquidity crises, or governance meltdowns. In a bear market filled with protocol failures and hacks, resilience itself is a bullish signal.

Jupiter TVL – Source: DefiLlama

Behind the scenes, Aave continues to run smoothly across multiple chains – Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and more, providing a stable, permissionless lending market that continues to earn protocol fees and build trust.

Learn more: What is Ethereum?

GHO: The Underdog Stablecoin Preparing to Go Mainstream

Perhaps Aave’s most important strategic move in the bear market is the launch of GHO, its native overcollateralized stablecoin. While many other DeFi projects chase short-term hype cycles, Aave has remained focused on infrastructure and sustainable, long-term protocol value.

GHO stands out not simply because it’s dollar-pegged, but because of how it’s minted and how value is captured. Users mint GHO by locking collateral into the Aave protocol, and the interest they pay on borrowed GHO flows directly into the Aave DAO treasury. According to Aave’s governance forum, GHO borrow rates are currently set around 1.5% to 2.5%, depending on the user’s staking status and risk parameters. As of Q1 2025, the circulating supply of GHO has surpassed 55 million USD, with daily minting activity growing steadily as more markets onboard the stablecoin across Ethereum and Layer 2 networks.

This structure creates a direct revenue stream for Aave governance – a virtuous loop that ties GHO adoption to protocol income and potentially to AAVE token value, should the DAO vote to use treasury proceeds for staking rewards or token buybacks.

Unlike MakerDAO’s DAI, which now relies on centralized stablecoin backing (USDC made up over 50% of DAI’s reserves in 2024), GHO aims to remain truly overcollateralized and native to the DeFi ecosystem. Its issuance is fully transparent and programmable through smart contracts, aligning with the ethos of decentralized finance.

In the next market cycle, as confidence in centralized assets weakens and stablecoin volume surges again, GHO could emerge as the “native currency” across Aave’s multichain deployments. With lending demand expected to return alongside rising TVL, GHO adoption could be a critical flywheel that revives Aave’s growth through both usage and governance revenue.

Aave v3 and Cross-Chain Liquidity: Building the Pipes Before the Flow

Aave v3 brought with it a suite of upgrades that, while not headline-grabbing, significantly enhance the protocol’s foundation for long-term growth. One of the most impactful features is E-Mode (or High-Efficiency Mode), which allows users to borrow more capital when their collateral and borrowed assets are highly correlated. For example, stablecoin-to-stablecoin or ETH and stETH. This optimization improves capital efficiency dramatically, offering up to 23% more borrowing power in certain correlated asset classes, which is especially valuable for users managing delta-neutral or leveraged strategies.

Another major improvement is Portal, Aave’s mechanism for enabling seamless cross-chain liquidity between different deployments of the protocol. Portal allows aTokens to be burned on one chain and minted on another, effectively creating a unified lending experience across Layer 2 and sidechains without fragmenting user liquidity. In addition to cross-chain flows, Aave v3 also introduced enhancements like risk isolation modes, where newly onboarded assets can be siloed from the rest of the protocol, and supply/borrow caps, which give governance more granular control over exposure and risk management.

These upgrades aren’t about grabbing attention—they’re about building resilient infrastructure. While retail sentiment has rotated to memecoins and speculative narratives, Aave is quietly becoming a multichain liquidity backbone for serious DeFi capital. Aave will already have the architecture, liquidity networks, and protocol depth in place to scale quickly and efficiently. It will already have the architecture, liquidity networks, and protocol depth in place to scale quickly and efficiently.

Jupiter: From Solana’s Default Router to a DeFi Powerhouse

In a Bear Market, Liquidity still Moves and Jupiter Routes It

Even as Solana fell below 100 USD, Jupiter continued to record substantial on-chain activity. In crypto, downturns don’t mean silence; capital still moves. Traders rotate out of riskier tokens into stablecoins, derisk from volatile assets like memecoins, or rebalance into safer yield strategies. Jupiter, as Solana’s leading DEX aggregator, processes nearly all of these movements, making it the default routing layer for real-time liquidity on the network.

More than just a Uniswap equivalent, Jupiter serves as the liquidity backbone of Solana, aggregating prices and routing orders across over 30 decentralized exchanges, including Raydium, Orca, Lifinity, Meteora, and more. By analyzing thousands of routing paths per trade, it consistently delivers the lowest slippage and most efficient execution, especially for larger transactions. As of early 2025, over 92% of swaps initiated from the Phantom wallet are routed through Jupiter, and it is also integrated natively into Backpack, Solflare, and other key Solana dApps.

Fee ear by Jupiter despite market condition – Source: DefiLlama

This isn’t hype; it’s core infrastructure adoption. In November 2024, Jupiter reported over 93 billion USD in spot trading volume, marking one of the highest monthly volumes ever recorded by a DEX aggregator across all chains. For comparison, that figure rivals Uniswap’s and 1inch’s best-performing months on Ethereum. Despite the broader market slowdown, Jupiter still maintains a daily volume between 1.5 and 2.5 billion USD, according to data from DeFiLlama and Jupiter Terminal. This steady activity highlights not just resilience but essential utility: Jupiter remains the engine that powers token swaps across the entire Solana ecosystem, even during bearish periods.

More than Swaps: Jupiter Perps, Memecoin UIs, and a Roadmap for the Future

Jupiter is no longer content with being just a swap aggregator. In the depths of this bear market, the protocol has been rapidly evolving, expanding its product suite to cement its role as a full-stack DeFi platform on Solana. One of its most significant developments is Jupiter Perps, a perpetual futures trading module designed to offer decentralized leverage trading, positioning itself as an alternative to both centralized exchanges and protocols like GMX. This allows traders to engage in advanced trading strategies directly on-chain, with Jupiter’s signature focus on speed and cost-efficiency.

In parallel, Jupiter has launched Jupiter APE, a memecoin trading interface that caters to the Solana community’s appetite for speculative assets. It simplifies the discovery and trading of trending tokens, making Jupiter a go-to platform for retail traders even during market lulls. These new features demonstrate the team’s agility and responsiveness to market behavior, offering relevant tools that keep users engaged despite unfavorable conditions.

At the heart of this evolution is the JUP token, which is undergoing a meaningful transformation. Originally distributed through a widely celebrated airdrop, JUP is being repositioned as both a utility and governance token with actual value accrual. In early 2025, the protocol executed a dramatic token burn, eliminating 3 billion JUP, or roughly 30% of the total supply. This move marked a strategic shift toward deflationary tokenomics and increased scarcity. Further aligning token value with protocol performance, Jupiter has committed to using 50% of its revenue to buy back JUP from the open market.

The numbers are compelling. In 2024 alone, Jupiter generated more than $102 million in protocol revenue, the majority of which came from its Perps platform. If this revenue level continues—or grows in a bull market environment, it could create real buy-side pressure on JUP and justify its evolving narrative as a token with both utility and yield potential. Jupiter, in this sense, isn’t just building features; it’s laying the foundation for a sustainable token economy.

Ecosystem

Aave—The DeFi Powerhouse of EVM chains

Aave’s dominance in the DeFi space is clearly reflected in its TVL (Total Value Locked), which consistently ranks among the top 3-5 protocols on platforms like DeFiLlama. With a reputation as a secure and highly liquid lending protocol, Aave attracts both retail and institutional investors.

In terms of network coverage, Aave is a multichain protocol but remains largely focused on EVM-compatible ecosystems. While Ethereum mainnet once hosted the majority of Aave’s activity, high gas fees have driven many retail users to adopt Aave on layer 2 and sidechains such as Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism.

Although Solana is one of the few major ecosystems where Aave has not been deployed directly – mainly due to architectural differences, the protocol is still indirectly recognized by Solana users through cross-chain bridges and the Portal initiative. In the future, Aave may deepen its integration with Solana if technical support becomes available.

Jupiter – Ambition beyond Solana

Jupiter grew popular alongside the rise of the Solana ecosystem and remains deeply tied to its community.

It plays a key role in Solana DeFi, used directly or indirectly by nearly all users. If you use Phantom or Solana dApps, swaps often route through Jupiter to secure the best price.

From an ecosystem perspective, Jupiter has integrated dozens of DEXs and liquidity protocols on Solana. These include AMMs like Raydium and Orca, old order books like Serum, and lending protocol pools. As such, Jupiter functions as the “price discovery engine” of Solana DeFi.

Beyond its core functionality, Jupiter DAO is highly proactive in community building. They’ve run airdrops, hosted trading events, and stayed active on X and Discord to grow engagement. Thanks to these efforts, Jupiter has built a top DeFi community with nearly 1 million JUP holders on Solana.

Although it currently operates primarily on Solana, Jupiter does not want to confine itself to a single ecosystem. Recently, the team revealed Jupnet – a cross-chain network to link Solana with other blockchains.

If successful, Jupiter may reach more users beyond Solana – crucial given its heavy reliance and downtime issues on Solana.

Conclusion: Not Just Survivors, It’s Strategic Builders

Both Aave and Jupiter are more than just battle-tested protocols—they are strategic builders, quietly laying down the foundations for the next phase of decentralized finance while much of the market chases short-term narratives. Their development during a bear market is not a sign of stagnation but of discipline, focus, and long-term vision.

Aave is steadily positioning itself as a multichain base layer for DeFi lending, offering not just robust borrowing markets but also an emerging stablecoin in GHO and a DAO-aligned governance framework. Its architecture appeals to institutions, experienced DeFi users, and capital allocators looking for security, yield, and composability. Rather than rush to market with flashy updates, Aave is engineering a durable and scalable protocol that will be ready when stablecoin flows and lending demand return.

On the other hand, Jupiter is leaning into its strengths in speed, user experience, and community alignment. It is evolving rapidly, from a swap aggregator to a comprehensive trading platform featuring spot, perpetuals, memecoin tools, and eventually, cross-chain functionality via Jupnet. The platform taps Solana’s retail energy and builds for explosive growth in the next crypto cycle.

When the next bull market arrives, both protocols stand to benefit—but in different ways. Aave focuses on long-term capital and yield seekers, while Jupiter capitalizes on retail growth as Solana continues to expand. In that sense, they offer complementary DeFi bets: one on stable capital, the other on rapid user growth.

Even with ETH near $1,400 and SOL under $100, don’t overlook AAVE and JUP. They represent not just resilient protocols but ecosystems that have survived the worst and are coiled for the next leap. In bear markets, the smart move isn’t to chase noise—it’s to accumulate conviction. For long-term investors, Aave and Jupiter may be two top DeFi names to keep watching.

Read more: What Is DEX? A Beginner Guide to Decentralized Exchanges