Sentiment in the cryptocurrency market place is back on the ascent on November. 29 as the recent dip downward into the "farthermost fear" zone on the Crypto Fright and Greed Index improved slightly after Bitcoin (BTC) recovered higher up the $57,000 support, lifting the alphabetize college into the "fear" zone.

Fear & Greed Alphabetize. Source: Culling.me

Despite the overall "fearfulness" and "extreme fear" sentiments that have been dominating the market since the index began to decrease on Nov. 16, several sub-sectors of the cryptocurrency market, including metaverse-related projects and gaming protocols, take seen breakouts to new all-fourth dimension highs.

The rapid gains seen in these projects has led to some business organisation that the metaverse and gaming sectors could see a significant pullback in the short term if traders have profits and look more sustainable price levels, leading many to speculate as to which sector of the market will be the adjacent to see bullish momentum and price gains.

A deeper dive into the available data shows that the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector of the market has been steadily gaining momentum over the past several months as the full value locked in DeFi climbed to a new all-time high of $276.92 billion on Nov. nine and currently sits at $265.74 billion.

Total value locked in DeFi. Source: Defi Llama

The surge in TVL comes as new protocols go along to launch on Ethereum (ETH) compatible networks such every bit Fantom and layer-two solutions like Arbitrum that offer users the power to conduct transactions in a lower fee environment.

Related: Ethereum layer ii TVL reaches all-fourth dimension high

DEX action picks up

Another sign that action in DeFi is on the rise has been the uptick in the trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Uniswap and SushiSwap, which accept been seeing a slow increase in activity since the market bottomed in mid-July.

Total volume traded on decentralized exchanges. Source: Token Terminal

As seen in the nautical chart higher up, the volume traded on the top DEXs is now consistently back at levels like to what was seen during the bull market in the first one-half of 2022.

One of the nearly notable changes has been the add-on of activity from dYdX, a decentralized layer-ii perpetuals and futures substitution that surprised early on adopters back in September when information technology airdropped its new governance token to users who had previously engaged with the protocol.

Since its launch, dYdX has go the get-to option for decentralized options trading in the crypto market and at one fourth dimension saw its trading activity surpass the spot trading activeness on the top U.South.-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

One concluding piece of evidence showing that activity in DeFi is on the rise along with the underlying sentiment in where the market place is headed is found in the borrowed volume on the tiptop lending platforms, which is at present near an all-time high of $35 billion.

Borrowed volume on lending platforms. Source: Token Terminal

This indicates that crypto hodlers are locking upwardly their tokens every bit collateral to receive loans that tin can be put to farther use in crypto and DeFi related activity, and suggests that many are expecting a continuation of the balderdash market as the ecosystem prepares to close out 2022 and get 2022 off to a hot outset.

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $2.63 trillion and Bitcoin's dominance charge per unit is 42.1%.

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