JSYK, if you're looking forward to being inside deep DeFi spaces, even for like a week, you're going to hear TVL mentioned a lot and tbh it's one of the terms that I am yet to even know about, up until a few days ago sha.
TVL means Total Value Locked and it's basically the sum of all the money people have contributed into a protocol. Meaning all the tokens across the liquidity pools and smart contracts together are your TVL.
& on StonFi specifically, TVL is related to how swaps actually work for you as a user and trader cuz when TVL is high, liquidity becomes much and more liquidity means you can make bigger trades without the price fluctuating against you, & your trades will be able to go through and the prices will stay more stable too.
but when TVL is not so high and liquidity isnt so much, even a swap of $2 can move the price noticeably and this seems to be when slippage becomes something I start worrying about🥲. so TVL is literally telling you how much real money is powering the pools that your swaps run through and how it affects your experience directly every time you trade
so if you ever want to know how StonFi is actually doing instead of just going by hype or marketing, check the TVL cuz it's one of the more honest signals out there
