There are DeFi blue chips you need to pay attention to. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been watching an interesting pattern playing out in DeFi. This is something most people probably aren’t paying attention to because of the current market condition. Take a close look at these list: - $AAVE - $UNI - $LDO Three blue-chip protocols, three different products, three different user bases; yet all showing the same underlying pattern: Market caps are down, while fundamentals are up. This is one of those patterns you notice when you see the clearer view and stop looking at just the charts. Let me break down: 1. $AAVE Aave’s market cap is down, but active loans have surged with strong growth. It’s quietly having one of its strongest usage periods since 2021. This is what real product-market fit looks like: Demand for borrowing is rising, and capital efficiency is improving. People forget: lending demand doesn’t care about token price. Traders borrow when they need leverage, market makers borrow when volatility rises, and Aave sits at the center of that liquidity loop. 2. $UNI Uniswap’s token has been stuck in a slow bleed, but the protocol itself is doing the opposite. Trading volumes (especially monthly averages) have been climbing. More swaps, more fees, more routing activity…yet the token seems to be underperforming. This is the classic DeFi problem: value accrues to the protocol, not the token; until it doesn’t. DeFi tokens almost always lag fundamentals, then reprice when the market wakes up. 3. $LDO Lido is another example where price doesn't equal performance. The amount of $ETH staked through Lido continues to push to all-time highs. Despite the market condition, Lido is quietly onboarding thousands to low millions of $ETH, strengthening validator distribution, and maintaining its position as the largest liquid staking protocol. So what’s the common pattern? Across these three charts, the same divergence appears: Protocol fundamentals rising → Token valuations depreciating due to market conditions. This is the market mispricing real usage. And that’s where opportunity lives. But this pattern isn’t limited to $AAVE, $UNI, and $LDO. There are more protocols showing this hidden strength beneath weak price dynamics. Note that I'm not shilling these tokens, but in a market like this, I choose to pay attention to fundamentals. We’re entering a new phase of DeFi. The protocols that are winning now are the ones with strong usage, sticky demand and clear revenue models.