Osmosis, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Cosmos, has emerged as the most actively developed decentralized finance (DeFi) project in the past month, according to data released by crypto intelligence platform Santiment.
Santiment stated in a post on March 25 that Osmosis had witnessed more than 169 commits on GitHub in the last 30 days. The decentralized perpetuals exchange dYdX came in second place with 145 commits, while derivatives liquidity protocol Synthetix ranked third with 116.
Santiment clarified that the list of “developer activity” was compiled by aggregating all non-redundant GitHub activities listed on each project’s respective records and providing an average number based on those values.
The total value locked (TVL) and overall trading volumes on Osmosis experienced significant growth between early October and March 15.
The surge in activity can largely be attributed to the increased interest in airdrop farming on Cosmos-related infrastructure across the broader crypto sector, with Osmosis serving as the primary DEX on Cosmos. Several projects, including data availability blockchain network Celestia and multilayer RollApp deployer Dymension, utilize core elements of the Cosmos ecosystem for their networks and have now distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in airdrops to farmers.
As for dYdX, much of the development activity can be attributed to its v4 upgrade in early January. This network shift saw the decentralized derivatives exchange transition from an Ethereum layer-2 network to a standalone blockchain within the Cosmos ecosystem. Since its launch on January 25, the dYdX v4 network has generated over $60 billion worth of trading volume, according to DefiLlama data.
Meanwhile, the TVL on the Synthetix protocol has been steadily increasing since mid-February and currently stands at $994 million across the Ethereum and Optimism networks. In July 2023, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick announced the upcoming launch of a new derivatives front-end called Infinex. The alpha version of the platform is live on the mainnet, with the full-release version expected in the coming months.