Lido DAO (LDO)

Generating solid revenue in a bear market is generally a good indicator that a project will survive and eventually thrive in a later bull market…

Thanks to @Grayscale, they’ve listed the top 15 revenue-generating crypto protocols, and we’re going to explore a handful of our favourites! 🧵

If you had to guess the leading revenue-generating crypto protocol, would you have guessed @HyperliquidX?

If you did, you were correct.

Hyperliquid, the leading decentralized perps DEX has raked in over $871 million in revenue over the last year.

Most revenue comes from spot and perpetual trading fees, with those fees flowing to the HLP (Hyperliquidity Provider), market deployers, and the assistance fund, which helps to buy back and burn the $HYPE token.

According to online sources, over 46.4 million $HYPE tokens have been permanently burned, amounting to roughly $3.3 billion.

Despite the troubled year, DeFi’s flagship lending and borrowing protocol, @Aave, makes it at number 6 on the list, with over $125 million in generated revenue in the last year.

Aave earns revenue by taking a cut of borrower interest through its reserve factor, as well as income from liquidation fees, flash loan fees, $GHO stablecoin interest, swap fees, and SVR liquidation revenue.

To support the $AAVE token, the Aave DAO uses an estimated $50 million of protocol revenue every year to buy back $AAVE. The DAO will then decide what to do with the bought-back tokens.

I think we can all agree that although the $JUP token doesn’t currently reflect it, Jupiter has one of the most expansive arrays of products, all of which generate revenue handsomely.

The @JupiterExchange is 5th on the list, and has amassed over $130 million in revenue within the last 12 months. Revenue primarily stems from:

-> Swaps (DEX Aggregator)
-> Limit Orders
-> DCA/Recurring Buys
-> Perps Trading Fees
-> JLP
-> Lending
-> $jupSOL
-> Ape
-> Studio
-> More!

50% of Jupiter’s revenue is used to buy back $JUP, and up until early 2026, $JUP tokens were still entering circulation. Hopefully, the revenue can help push the token higher, especially when the Solana ecosystem is thriving once again.

Currently holding the largest TVL in Web3, in the last 12 months, the @LidoFinance protocol has generated $77M, ranking it 9th on the list.

Lido, the infamous Ethereum liquid staking protocol, generates fees simply by taking a 10% fee from staking rewards.

The $LDO token, however, does not benefit from any protocol revenue unless the DAO decides to approve a buyback. A few months ago, they proposed a $20 million buyback amid the token's all-time lows.

Overall, there are many protocols on the list below which we believe will continue to operate and generate extraordinary amounts of revenue.

Whether or not the list will be the same in the next year, or next month, for that matter, all of these protocols provide a product or service that people actually want.

Those are the projects that survive…

Well, most of them anyway.

That's it for now, thanks for reading!

I hope you guys enjoyed it and learned something!

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