Risk
Why TVL is not a safety signal
Size is attention and concentration. It is not diligence.
- 01Assets attributed
- 02Price source
- 03Double counts
- 04Concentration
Size is not diligence
Total value locked is an estimate of assets attributed to a contract, usually marked with a price. It says nothing reliable about code quality, admin keys, withdrawal capacity or whether the assets are the ones you think they are.
It can mislead in both directions
TVL rises when the asset’s price rises, when incentives pull deposits, and when the same capital is counted in a vault and in the market underneath it. It falls in a crash even if the contracts did not change.
How AltVaults treats it
Demo pages say ‘Demo TVL’ rather than inventing a dollar figure that looks live. A future live figure would need a source, a timestamp and a note on double counting.
Digital assets and DeFi protocols are high risk. You may lose some or all of the assets you deploy. AltVaults DeFi provides software, data and informational tools. It does not provide investment advice, recommendations, brokerage, custody, fund management or guaranteed returns.