The Total Value Locked (TVL) in bridges measures the total USD value that is locked within the Ethereum side of bridge smart contracts. Locked tokens are not available on the Ethereum chain, but are available on the target blockchains. An increasing TVL means that value is flowing out of Ethereum and into other target blockchains, whilst a decreasing TVL means the value is flowing back into Ethereum. Bridge TVL is computed daily, by multiplying the number of tokens locked within the bridge smart contracts, by the latest daily price for each token.

Bridges are protocols that enable digital assets to be transferred from one blockchain to another. When an asset is transferred out of Ethereum, it gets deposited and locked into a bridge smart contract. When the asset is transferred back to Ethereum, it is withdrawn and released from the smart contract.

This metric only includes bridge contracts on the Ethereum side. The bridges included in this metric cover bridge deposits into both L1 and L2 blockchains, providing information on the value transferred to both L1 competitors, and L2 scaling solutions. Each bridge included in this metric represents a single blockchain, except the ones labeled as multichain. That label is used to represent bridges that allow transferring assets across multiple different chains.