Sentora’s Vincent Maliepaard urges DeFi to track “Total Value Covered” beyond TVL

In a Mar 21, 2026 guest analysis, Sentora marketing director Vincent Maliepaard argues DeFi should complement Total Value Locked (TVL) with a new metric for how much capital is actually protected. He points to stablecoin usage growth—including Visa’s estimate that global stablecoin transaction volume rose from more than $3.5 trillion in 2023 to more than $5.5 trillion in 2024—as evidence DeFi is becoming real infrastructure. Maliepaard proposes “Total Value Covered” (TVC) to measure capital backed by explicit risk-transfer mechanisms, aiming to better signal institutional readiness.