DeFi revenue is recovering.
Protocol revenue is up 11% in a month, and the revenue meta is the playbook everyone is quoting.
So I went through the major DeFi tokens: 30-day revenue, how much reaches holders, and what keeps it growing.
S tier
$HYPE: 99% of trading fees buy and burn HYPE. That was $55.4M in 30 days, the most of any token, but at 30x holder revenue the price already reflects it.
The first USDC yield payout (~$14.5M) hits the buyback fund on 3 Oct, and HIP-4 outcome markets will add fees after testing.
A tier
$PUMP: Half of revenue goes to buy and burn, $23.9M last month for a 10.4% yield. It trades under 10x because the income depends on memecoin launches. Custom Pairs and trading on EVM chains broaden that.
$UNI: The fee switch reached v4 and Robinhood Chain in late July, taking the monthly burn from $9.6M to $15.2M. Votes to extend v4 fees to 5 more chains are expected.
$AERO: All swap fees go to lockers. That was $15.1M last month, triple the month before, though emissions offset part of the 23% yield. The Velodrome merger launches as Aero on 21 Oct across 7 chains.
$AAVE: Borrowers paid $36.5M in fees and Aave kept $5.1M. Aavenomics 3.0 buys back ~292 $AAVE a day, Stani has floated burning them, and V4 TVL grew 82% in September.
B tier
$SKY: Holders got $5.2M of $13.5M revenue last month. Spark, Grove and Obex borrow $5.9B of USDS against $17.5B in limits, so borrowing has room to triple.
$JUP: Half of revenue buys back JUP, about $3.1M last month. Unlocks outweighed it until team emissions were paused this year. A community proposal would lift the share to 70% and burn.
$LIT: Trading fees buy and burn LIT, $2.6M last month for a 3.2% yield. Options are next. Against that, Robinhood is routing its US perps elsewhere, and team unlocks start Jan 2027.
$LDO: Lido buys $LDO from its staking fee, capped at $10M a year. Its share of staked ETH fell from 26% to 23% over the year. stVaults is meant to reverse that, and its fee waiver ends 31 Oct.
$ENA: Ethena made $23.5M in fees and ENA captures almost none of it. The fee switch turns on at $7.5B USDe supply, starting at 5% and rising to 20% at $20B. Supply is $4.9B today.
$BP: The exception. Backpack is an exchange, so $BP gets no buyback or fee share, but stakers of 1+ year get a claim on up to 20% of company equity at an IPO or acquisition. With 75% of supply locked, it's a bet on that IPO and Backpack's lead in tokenized stocks on Solana.
C tier
$ETHFI: EtherFi earned $3.8M last month, mostly from the Cash card, where spend went from $54M in January to $129M in September. Buybacks stopped after Q2, and resumed in mid-Sep with over 500k $ETHFI bought back.
$PENDLE: 80% of revenue goes to $sPENDLE, but revenue fell from $2.1M in April to $0.35M in Sep. Boros earns about $35K a month, and its volume has fallen since April. New tokenized assets on Pendle v2 and new markets on Boros will support Pendle's bounceback.
$RAY: A cut of trading fees buys back $RAY. Revenue rose about 5x to $7.5M after LaunchLab opened to any pair, including stock-paired launches. The 10.7% yield holds only if that volume stays.
$CAKE: Every swap burns some $CAKE, and supply has shrunk for nearly 3 years. It yields 7.1% at 9.5x revenue, with the Infinity AMM deploying on Circle's Arc next.
D tier
$MORPHO: $19.8M in fees last month and no fee switch. It runs Robinhood's Earn product, has $5.5B in loans, and Coinbase now offers BTC-backed fixed-rate loans on it. Until a fee vote, the token is priced on an option.
$FLUID: Revenue is $0.6M a month, with no buybacks since Q1 after $4.75M over the year. DEX v2 and Jupiter Lend's growth could change that.
$JTO: Staking and MEV fees go to the DAO treasury, and the token is down 67% on the year. Since July, 80% of JTX terminal fees go to buying and burning $JTO, the first direct link between product and token.
Interesting photonics selloff today on no news?
$LITE down -4.95%
$AAOI down -4.85%
$SIVE down -14.8%
$SOI down -5.73%
$AXTI down -8.13%
$IQE down -12.13%
I think it’s probably the most compelling theme going forward (even more than power semis).
Just tends to be very volatile on the way up.
Surprised about $AAOI though given there’s some institutional notes apparently about long term $AMD or $NVDA agreements. (Rosenblatt). Maybe $600m ATM caps some near term upside.
$SIVE as well, given EU Chips Act 2 is next week around photonics, and they’re listed on the blueprint. Same with MSCI/NASDAQ omx inflow next week.
I’ve been personally adding to positions since I have high conviction in the photonics theme (CPO especially) given TAM expansion overall next 2 years.
@eulerfinance@monad You just should return our funds, that you lost. No one cares about anything else. You a criminal that trying to switch the topic. Nothing else matters, start working out YOUR debt! return the usdt (re7lab) !
@BTCadept@Re7Labs@eulerfinance@CoinDesk Immediately withdraw all of your funds from RE7 and eluer, otherwise you will lose all of your funds,This is a huge scam, and users who cannot withdraw funds from RE7 and euler should immediately report to the local financial regulatory authorities!
@eulerfinance Could you please clarify the situation on euler BSC vaults? (Re7 lab USDT pools) Quick update would help a lot, no available liquidity! why Utilization 100%?
@Re7Labs Could you please clarify the situation on euler BSC vaults? (USD1 and USDT pools) Quick update would help a lot, no available liquidity! why Utilization 100%?