#termmax @TermMax

I was looking at TermMax on DefiLlama and one thing felt a little strange.

The dashboard shows about $31.29M in TVL right now. At first glance, that sounds pretty healthy.

But then I looked at the fees chart.

And that’s where the picture gets more interesting. The fee activity looks tiny compared with the amount of capital sitting in the protocol. So I started wondering: how much of that TVL represents people actually using TermMax, and how much is simply capital sitting there because the incentives make it worthwhile?

That distinction matters.

It’s a bit like seeing a packed restaurant parking lot and assuming everyone inside is ordering food. Maybe they are. Or maybe half the cars are there because there’s some giveaway happening next door.

I caught myself thinking about this because TermMax’s whole proposition is actually pretty useful: fixed-rate borrowing/lending gives users something DeFi usually struggles with — predictability. Options add another layer for structuring positions.

So I’m not reading the TVL as meaningless. I’m just not treating it as proof of product-market fit either.

And there’s a very interesting test coming: TMX TGE is scheduled for August 25, with XP, AP and MP rewards becoming claimable after TGE.

That changes the incentive equation.

What happens to usage once the reward-driven reason to interact becomes less important?

That’s the metric I’ll be watching. Not how many wallets showed up, but how many users keep borrowing, lending and trading because they actually need what TermMax provides.

TVL can tell you where the capital is. Usage tells you why it stayed.
$BOME
$MAGMA
$USELESS

After TermMax TGE, what matters most?