Fireblocks Reveals 150% Annual Increase In Institutional DeFi Transactions

Institutional DeFi adoption is surging.

On Dec. 4, Fireblocks, an enterprise digital asset management platform, announced that the volume of transactions executed by its institutional users involving DeFi dApps rose 150% year-over-year to more than $60 billion.

DeFi activity rose by 110% in Q2 and Q3, signaling that institutional DeFi demand did not waver during the bearish momentum in the third quarter.

The news coincides with the total value locked in DeFi protocols soaring to an all-time high of $201.3 billion.

In response to the rise in institutional DeFi activity, the company announced it upgraded its DeFi suite to bolster security assurances for users.

The new products include Fireblocks Swaps, allowing users to trade tokens using Uniswap liquidity from the Fireblocks platform, Token Allowance Manager, enabling users to manage smart contract permissions across multiple wallets, a multi-party computation (MPC) wallet, and Key Link, which improves private key management.

“For TradFi teams that are actively scaling the on-chain operations and interacting with DeFi, Fireblocks has introduced new guardrails,” Fireblocks said. “With blockchain technology becoming more integrated into financial services, Fireblocks’ new releases point ahead to their goal of abstracting away the UX complexities before they become security issues.”

Idan Ofrat, the chief product officer and co-founder of Fireblocks, announced the news during Fireblocks’ annual user conference, SPARK.

Fireblocks first launched its institutional DeFi suite in 2020.

Digital asset payments boom

During the conference, Fireblocks also noted that payments companies comprise the fastest-growing segment within the Fireblocks network, having doubled in 2024.

Fireblocks said it processed more than $1.5 trillion worth of stablecoin transactions this year, up 100% in the past three years. Fireblocks predicted further growth in digital asset payments in response to the incoming Trump administration expected to introduce crypto-friendly regulations.

“We are going to see a fairly significant transformation in the digital asset industry with the anticipated 180-degree shift in the US regulatory environment, including a reversal of Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and the anticipated stablecoin bill getting passed,“ said Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks. “This will drive significant growth in the adoption of stablecoins in the global economy.”

Fireblocks noted that more than 70% of the top 25 global payments companies already have some form of stablecoin product.