CLO surges nearly 100% in seven days, the logic behind the rising popularity of Sei ecosystem DeFi

This is not just a celebration of a single token. It reflects a comprehensive revival of the entire Sei ecosystem.

Since the launch of the V2 upgrade in mid-2024 and the official introduction of the parallelized EVM mainnet, the data of this high-performance public chain has undergone a qualitative change: daily active users soared from 1,300 to nearly 900,000, daily transaction volume jumped from 57,000 to 1.65 million, and total value locked (TVL) increased from $100 million to a peak of over $687 million.

01 CLO Anomaly: A Short-term Price and Long-term Value Battle

Recently, one of the market focuses is Yei Finance (CLO) within the Sei ecosystem. According to Coinglass data, as of January 14, the current price of CLO is $0.723. Although there was a correction in the past 24 hours, its gains over the past 7 days remain impressive, with a stage increase approaching 100%.

CLO’s rapid rise is not entirely isolated. In the decentralized finance sector, a token’s short-term price performance is often closely related to the overall development of its ecosystem, liquidity incentives, and market sentiment.

As the native DeFi protocol within the Sei ecosystem, the value of its token CLO benefits directly from the surge in activity on the Sei chain and the influx of liquidity.

Market participants are highly perceptive; they are seeking niches that are not yet fully priced but have high growth potential.

02 Sei Ecosystem: From Technological Transformation to Data Explosion

CLO’s rise is rooted in a major strategic shift in the fundamentals of the Sei public chain. Known for its high-performance order book, the Cosmos SDK-based chain made a key decision in 2024: to fully embrace EVM.

This is not just a simple compatibility upgrade. In its V2 upgrade, Sei combines the modular advantages of Cosmos SDK with Ethereum’s parallelized EVM.

This upgrade has fundamentally changed Sei’s growth trajectory. It means that millions of Ethereum developers worldwide can migrate their mature code and products to Sei with almost zero cost.

Meanwhile, rapid integration of industry-standard infrastructure like MetaMask and Etherscan has paved the way for users and developers.

The true validation comes from data. The table below clearly shows key metrics before and after the Sei V2 upgrade:

Notably, in early August 2025, the daily active users of the Sei network once exceeded Solana. The native USDC issuance surpassed $100 million in a very short period, outpacing well-known chains like zkSync and Algorand, demonstrating strong asset attraction.

03 Performance First: Giga Upgrade and Future Competitive Barriers

Behind robust ecosystem data is Sei’s relentless pursuit of performance. Its Twin Turbo consensus mechanism can reduce block finalization time to approximately 360 milliseconds, enabling high-frequency trading.

But this is not the end. According to Sei’s official roadmap, the Giga upgrade is scheduled for Q1 2026, aiming to increase transaction throughput to an astonishing 200,000 TPS and further reduce finalization time to within 400 milliseconds.

This upgrade will deepen parallel execution and optimize storage, aiming to solidify its performance advantages in high-frequency DeFi, on-chain gaming, and AI applications.

To support this vision, the Sei Foundation plans to allocate $250,000 in 2026 to fund community activities and accelerators for global creators, continuously expanding its ecosystem builders.

04 Institutional Entry and Value Capture: From On-chain Data to Real-world Assets

The long-term value of a public chain depends not only on retail and developer participation but also on whether it can earn the trust of traditional capital. Sei has made substantial progress in this regard.

In 2025, Canary Capital submitted registration documents for the Staked SEI ETF, indicating that SEI is likely to enter compliant institutional portfolios.

Over $30 million of real-world assets tokenized by top asset management firms like BlackRock and Apollo went live on the Sei network by the end of 2025.

This also sparked a deeper market discussion: how to fairly evaluate a public chain’s value? Some analyses are moving away from the simple “market cap narrative” and focusing more on the fundamental “value capture” ability, i.e., the real fee income generated on-chain.

Some analysts point out that although Sei’s TVL has grown rapidly, its average daily on-chain fee income during a certain period was about $320.

Compared to the billion-dollar valuation dreams, this number highlights the current challenges faced by the blockchain industry: overbuilding infrastructure and relatively insufficient application demand. It also reminds investors that while paying attention to the grand narrative of ecosystem expansion, they should also scrutinize the sustainability of its economic model.

05 Opportunities and Challenges Coexist

From CLO’s short-term fluctuations to the long-term development of the Sei ecosystem, we see a dynamic picture. Through decisive technological transformation, Sei has successfully integrated with Ethereum’s vast developer and liquidity network, and with its excellent performance, it has opened up opportunities in DeFi, gaming, RWA, and other sectors.

It proves that in today’s multi-chain landscape, compatibility and high performance are not mutually exclusive choices. However, challenges ahead are equally clear.

In fierce competition with other high-performance chains like Solana and Sui, Sei needs to continuously convert its technological advantages into irreplaceable, cash-flow-generating killer applications.

How to effectively turn the surging users and transaction volume into sustainable protocol revenue will be key to whether it can evolve from a “growth star” to a “value giant.”

Investors should deepen their understanding of the fundamental development, competitive landscape, and long-term value capture logic behind ecosystem tokens like CLO when considering their volatility opportunities. Every market fluctuation could be a preview of the future.