The total value locked (TVL) on decentralized finance protocols fell 24.7% last quarter to $74.3 billion, marking the second-largest quarterly decline for the novel financial services industry, behind only the quarter that saw the Terra ecosystem collapse.

The decline has meant that DeFi recorded its first-ever yearly decline in total value locked, losing 76.4% of the value locked on it since the beginning of 2022. That’s according to CryptoCompare’s 2023 Q1 Outlook report, which points out Ethereum’s dominance in the Defi sector is still 68.7%, with its market share, up from 64.8% in the third quarter of the year.

The total value locked on Ethereum has, nevertheless, plunged 20.2% to $51 billion. It far outperformed Solana’s decentralized finance space, which fell 81.7% to $445 million in the fourth quarter, affected by the collapse of FTX and Alameda Research, both of which were heavily invested in the space.

According to CryptoCompare’s report, a prominent factor in the decline of the DeFi space last year was the decline in the annual yield being offered by the various protocols in the space. As these yields have been declining, yields offered through traditional finance assets have been rising as central banks resort to quantitative tightening to rein in inflation.

Throughout 2022, CryptoCompare wrote, the average yield of all liquidity pools in the DeFi sector dropped from 6.24% to 1.87% by the end of the year.