Innovative DeFi protocols: unconventional approaches to yield and tokenization

1. Olympus DAO and treasury-backed loans

Olympus DAO is a decentralized lending protocol that allows users to both borrow and lend in digital assets. The project team was the first in the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) market to implement the Protocol Owned Liquidity (POL) model.

The main feature of Olympus DAO is its rebasing mechanism. Thanks to it, the native token of Olympus DAO, called OHM, becomes a self-regulating asset with its internal economy.

Olympus DAO liquidity providers can exchange their liquidity tokens (LP tokens) for OHM, and their OHM balance in wallets will increase daily. However, the number of OHM tokens increases not through inflation, as in many lending protocols, but through compensation from the project's reserves.

Olympus DAO liquidity providers earn passive income via rebasing while remaining independent from external market makers (all liquidity is generated within the DeFi protocol itself).

The Total Value Locked (TVL) of Olympus DAO is $241 million, and since the beginning of 2024, this figure has grown by more than 30%.

2. Tokemak — a pioneer among LaaS solutions in DeFi

Developers of the Tokemak DeFi project proposed a platform offering community-managed liquidity. Tokemak was one of the first Liquidity-as-a-Service (LaaS) solutions in the DeFi space.

The key feature of the Tokemak DeFi protocol is that liquidity providers can deposit their digital assets, such as Ethereum (ETH) or stablecoins like Tether (USDT) or USD Coin (USDC), into special "reactors." In return, they receive liquidity tokens (reTOKEN), which confirm their share in the pool and allow them to withdraw liquidity later.

Holders of Tokemak's native token (TOKE) vote on where to direct the liquidity for yield generation. Thus, liquidity providers don't need to analyze positions or constantly shift liquidity between protocols. In other words, Tokemak offers users automated, community-governed liquidity.

According to DeFi Llama as of August 2025, Tokemak's TVL is $113 million — about 10 times lower than its peak of $1.138 billion in April 2022. Nevertheless, since the start of 2024, this figure has increased more than 3.5 times.

3. Rumpel and the tokenization of points

Asset tokenization and the RWA (Real World Assets) sector are gaining momentum in the crypto market. However, not only can assets like gold, stocks, or real estate be tokenized.

The Rumpel team developed and launched in September 2024 a DeFi protocol that allows users to tokenize points earned through loyalty programs. These points can then be freely converted into various cryptocurrencies such as ETH, USDC, DAI, and many others.

As of August 2025, Rumpel is the leading protocol in the Synthetics sector of DeFi, with a TVL of $110 million. Since the beginning of 2025, this figure has more than doubled.

4. Aztec Network and private DeFi transactions

Swaps and staking are among the most popular financial services in the DeFi market. This is evident from the activity on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and liquid staking protocols such as Lido and RocketPool.

However, nearly all of these protocols follow the principle of transparency that underpins most blockchain projects: all transactions are visible in history and accessible to any user.

Aztec Network developers launched the first confidential DeFi protocol based on their own ZK-rollups* and PLONK technology. Through the native decentralized app zk.money, users can perform private swaps, make anonymous deposits, and stake cryptocurrency.

Aztec Network is even integrated with major DeFi protocols such as the lending platform Aave and the leading liquid staking protocol Lido.

* ZK-rollup — a technology based on Zero-Knowledge Proof, allowing the validation of groups of transactions without revealing sender or receiver data.

5. Centrifuge and NFTs as collateral

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have long been used in the crypto market to tokenize art and intellectual property rights. However, Centrifuge developers found another way to use NFTs — by tokenizing accounts receivable and real estate, allowing companies to use them as collateral for loans.

Here's how it works: a company uploads the necessary document to the blockchain, creating an NFT token based on it, and then sends it to the Centrifuge liquidity pool to obtain a loan in stablecoins.

Investors, on the other hand, can issue these loans backed by real-world income, earning interest without exposing themselves to the volatility typical of digital assets.

Centrifuge is integrated with one of the largest lending protocols, MakerDAO, and has partnerships with major blockchain projects like Chainlink and Polygon. Like many other DeFi projects, Centrifuge has its native token (CFI). The market capitalization of the CFI token is $153 million, ranking it 261st on CoinMarketCap.

As for TVL, which stands at $648 million as of August 2025, Centrifuge ranks among the top 10 DeFi protocols in the RWA sector.