DeFi is measured by a small set of numbers that are quoted constantly and examined rarely. Total value locked is the headline one, and it is an accounting figure with conventions rather than a fact. The same dollar deposited, borrowed against and redeposited can be counted more than once. Whether a given protocol’s figure includes its own token, and at what price, changes the number materially.
Yield is the other. Every sustainable yield is a payment from somebody for something — interest from a borrower, a share of trading fees, a staking reward funded by issuance. Once the payer is identified, the durability of the yield usually answers itself, and so does the risk being taken to earn it. A yield with no identifiable payer is being funded out of token emissions, which is a transfer rather than a return.
Token unlock schedules belong in the same frame. Supply arriving on a published date is one of the few genuinely knowable future events in this market, and it is public in the documentation long before it moves anything.
TVL is the number DeFi uses to signal size and trust. DefiLlama's own rules show what it includes, what it excludes, and how the same tokens…
APY tells you nothing about durability. Sorting a yield into what actually funds it is the first real test.
An unlock moves tokens from locked to circulating supply, on a schedule set out in advance.
We do not recommend protocols or chase advertised APYs. A rate quoted without naming who pays it and out of what is not information, and we will not reprint one as though it were.