5 Leading DeFi Aggregators in 2021

Decentralized finance (commonly referred to as DeFi) is one of the fastest growing areas within the cryptosphere.

Last year, a huge number of new products and services were launched, from lending protocols to liquidity mines. As the sector grows, keeping tabs on all the available products has become increasingly challenging. 

Even for those individuals who are able to keep track, the scattered nature of the many protocols, each with their own controls and very different user interfaces, makes operating in the sector a challenge. One of the best ways of mitigating this is with a DeFi aggregator.

Aggregators are one of the latest innovations in the burgeoning DeFi market that allows traders to tap deep liquidity and receive better pricing. Aggregators gather the best of the space into one dashboard and user interface. All that remains is for users to find the aggregator that suits their particular needs best.

It is interesting to note that DeFi aggregators have become very popular among active traders. In fact, they made up around 20% of decentralized trading volumes in mid-2020.

Here we take a look at some of the popular DeFi aggregators on the market today.

Zerion is one of the better-known aggregators, integrating the likes of Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, and Balancer. This allows users to make interest on stablecoins such as USDT and DAI, or participate in liquidity mining, across any of these major protocols.

Zerion makes trading simpler too, with users able to swap any token LP share or Vault in a single transaction. The Zerion dashboard also recently launched a favorites tab, allowing users to keep track of their hottest DeFi token picks. Zerion is one of the best established dashboards on the market and continues to demonstrate why so many people choose it as their favored aggregator.

Zapper is a simple and easy-to-master aggregator that packs a serious punch. It hosts a range of high quality tools and features including estimates on potential return on investment.

Zapper has been attempting to differentiate itself by making as wide a range of options available to the public as possible. It tracks positions from major protocols such as Uniswap and Synthetix as well as Curve. The Farm tab lists 13 pages of yield farming opportunities including Uniswap, Balancer, Sushiswap and Curve. If you’re someone who likes a breadth and depth of choice, Zapper may be the aggregator for you.

With its dark grey and green color scheme, DeFi Saver might be the aggregator which suits “night mode” users best. It also tries to maximize space instead of packing everything in one place; a notable example is how it minimizes the menu on left side when not in use.

From the portfolio page on the home screen, DeFi Saver users can monitor their net worth and get a summary of how their assets are performing in individual protocols. On the left menu users can choose to access a range of protocols including MakerDAO, Compound and Aave and receive more detailed information from there. Overall, DeFi Saver is a powerful DeFi aggregator that looks good and performs well earning its spot on this list.

PlasmaFinance aggregates using decentralized oracle data across the major protocols in the sector, with plans to expand this aggregation to bring the best of DeFi under one banner.

It allows users to directly interact with these protocols from its interface too, allowing users to migrate liquidity across pools and protocols with its “Rebalancer” function. Its recently launched PlasmaSwap DEX reflects a desire to appeal to professional traders, providing deep analytics functionality, advanced trading and arbitrage tools not typically found on other DeFi aggregators. 

Like DeFi Saver, InstaDapp allows users to minimize the left navigation menu, freeing up more space for data and analytics. It’s a neat UI choice that definitely benefits the InstaDapp aggregator. InstaDapp also chooses the same method of aggregation as DeFi Saver, picking protocols over functions, making these two fairly similar from a curation standpoint.

Overall, InstaDapp looks stunning and very easy to navigate, but with just one minor bone to issue -- the pop up “feedback button” in the bottom left of the can be a little distracting. It’s a shame, because InstaDapp is great in almost every other regard. In any case, it more than deserves its position on this list of the very best DeFi aggregators.

There is no doubt that decentralized finance is becoming a more and more desirable means to earn income. DeFi aggregators are here as a single simple interface to dramatically improve the customer journey in the world of DeFi. 

With high gas fees and DEX trading commissions, aggregators will continue evolving and helping to improve user experience and help users get the best rate for their token swaps.