Does One Chinese Whale Dominate dYdX, TrueFi, and Ellipsis?
Tron founder Justin Sun's alleged wallet holds over 40% of dYdX's $1B TVL and the majority of TrueFi & Ellipsis' TVL
Chinese tech entrepreneur and Tron (TRON) founder Justin Sun was in the news late last year after he transferred almost $600M in Ethereum from a wallet to Binance. Sun's publicly known wallets are proven market movers. In May 2021, ETH dropped from $2,500 to below $2,000 on news that a $1B ETH position opened by Sun and Tron could be liquidated.
Sun's alleged Ethereum address is very active in decentralized finance (DeFi), with roughly 95% of its assets invested in farming, staking, or lending.
Sun holds over $2B on Ethereum, $609M on Binance Smart Chain, and $1M on Polygon. We can track Binance and Polygon transactions for this wallet because they are Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible blockchains using the same address as the Ethereum wallet.
Many investors use a DeFi project's total value locked (TVL) as an indicator of the project's health. Sun's investment represents a high proportion of some projects' TVL:
| Project | Sun's Investments | Project TVL | Sun Dominance |
|---|---|---|---|
| TrueFi (TRU) | $824M | $882M | 93% |
| Ellipsis (EPS) | $416M | $536M | 77% |
| dYdX (DYDX) | $440M | $1,000M | 44% |
| Wault (WEX) | $4M | $9M | 44% |
These projects are heavily exposed to Sun's investments, and it's easy to see the price of each token dropping or collapsing if Sun pulled his money.