Onchain businesses are generating real and significant revenue

The “trust economy” is starting to grow up. More than a few onchain businesses are now generating substantial, recurring, and even forecastable revenue. In August 2025, onchain businesses brought in $1.7 billion in revenue, up from just $31 million eight years ago*. Seven of the top ten fastest software companies to reach $100 million in revenue are blockchain-native**.

And it’s happening across the full stack. At the base layer, blockchains like Ethereum and Solana generate revenue by including transactions. Over the past three years, Ethereum alone has generated $4.5 billion in revenue*. That revenue accrues to ETH holders through a mechanism that burns a portion of the ETH paid as fees, effectively reducing supply.

Protocols building on top of these base layers also generate massive revenue. Hyperliquid, the fastest-growing onchain trading venue - see our previous Satellite edition on this - charges a small cut on every trade, like Nasdaq, but onchain. In August, they generated $110 million in revenue, translating to $1.3 billion in annualized revenue*, and this is after generating revenue for a little less than 1 year only. All of Hyperliquid’s trading fees accrue directly to token holders via open-market buybacks, unlike centralized exchanges where profits are retained by shareholders.

A significant share of revenue for protocols like Hyperliquid comes from a layer of applications built on top, that want to control their own branding, frontend, and user experience. That’s the power of composability: onchain businesses can interact with one another by default. And this application layer is also generating meaningful revenue. An example is EtherFi, a banking alternative platform that looks and feels like a neobank but is powered by decentralized finance protocols. Because of this, they can spin up new financial products (like yield accounts, credit lines, or perpetual futures with Hyperliquid) without needing to build the underlying infrastructure. They are currently making more than $80 million in annualized revenue, up from less than $20 million in April*. EtherFi sits between a fully onchain company and a centralized ‘offchain’ company.

The implication for investors is that fundamentals are becoming more prevalent in blockchain. Many of these tokens can be valued using traditional frameworks like cash flows, multiples, and future growth. Due to the nature of the technology, where growth happens at zero additional cost, the margins of these ‘businesses’ are on an entirely different scale and they are starting to take on the biggest incumbents.

We’re still very early. Not every onchain business has found product-market fit, and some revenue models will prove cyclical or unsustainable. But the trend is clear. Blockchain investing isn’t just a collection of speculative assets anymore. It’s becoming a stack of high-margin, programmable businesses. And some of them are printing more money, faster, than any tech company in history.

*Data from Token Terminal

**The Race to $100M in Revenue, link

Also this week

• SEC clears path for ‘waves’ of crypto ETFs with new listing standards
• Industries, Senators clash over crypto market structure legislation
• PayPal adding crypto to peer-to-peer payments
• London Stock Exchange Group rolls out blockchain platform for tokenized private funds
• Swiss banks pilot first blockchain-based interbank settlement
• Google announces AI payments protocol with stablecoin support

Relevant financial updates

• Syndicate*, a dedicated L2 where all appchain sequencing logic lives onchain as smart contracts, had its TGE and is currently trading at a $1.2bln FDV.
• Lombard*, a platform dedicated to integrating Bitcoin into DeFi, had its TGE and is currently trading at a $960mln FDV.
• Meso*, a blockchain-based payment platform for bridging traditional banking and card systems with cryptocurrency applications, was acquired by MoonPay for an undisclosed amount.
• Kredete, a payment platform that offers decentralized credit scoring solutions, has raised $22mln in a Series A funding round with investments from Polymorphic Capital, Partech and AfricInvest.
• Senpi*, a company offering an AI platform for cryptocurrency and DeFi onchain activities, has raised $4mln in a Seed funding round with investments from Coinbase Ventures, Lemniscap, Base Ecosystem Fund, Auros Global, Primal Capital and 1 other.
• Stablecore, a company that develops infrastructure for stablecoins on blockchain networks, has raised $20mln in a funding round with investments from Coinbase Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, EJF Capital, Curql, Peterson Ventures and 3 others.
• Bio protocol*, a protocol that supports decentralized science by enabling the collective funding, building, and ownership of tokenized biotech projects, has raised $6.90mln in a Seed funding round with investments from Animoca Brands, Big Brain Holdings, Mirana Ventures, Mechanism Capital, Foresight Ventures and 3 others.
• GRVT*, a cryptocurrency exchange that combines elements of centralized and decentralized finance, has raised $19mln in a Series A funding round with investments from zksync, Further Ventures, Eigenlayer, and 500 Global among others.
• Brale, a platform to create stablecoins, has raised $30mln in a Series A funding round with investments from Lightspeed and NEA among others.
• Titan, Solana’s premier meta DEX aggregator, has raised $7mln in a Seed funding round with investments from Galaxy Ventures, Frictionless Capital, Mirana, and 2 others.

*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 19/09

Interesting things to read

• Manager Pantera Capital explains the case for Solana and why they're launching one of the biggest Solana treasury companies to fuel its adoption
• Former Crypto Lead at Barclay’s Simon Taylor explains why stablecoins are the Trojan horse for tokenisation and how finance is on the brink of its biggest infrastructure shift since Visa on the Bankless podcast

Upcoming events

• Legends4Legends 2025, Amsterdam