Crypto "Fat Protocol": Key Players in the Top 10 Core Profit Areas

Author: Stacy Muur

Translation: Felix, PANews

The original “Fat Protocol” theory posited that the value of cryptocurrencies would disproportionately flow to the underlying blockchain rather than applications. This view is no longer valid.

By 2026, value will flow to “control points”: interfaces that understand user intent, trading venues that internalize liquidity, issuers holding asset liabilities, and entities capable of tokenizing inefficient assets. Regardless of which chain ultimately prevails, which application becomes popular, or which narrative dominates, these entities will be able to collect fees.

This ranking clearly demonstrates, based on metrics such as revenue, user count, ARPU (average revenue per user per year), market dominance, and capital efficiency, where the true “fat” layers of value are today, why they are fat, and where the next wave of marginal value will flow.

1. “Fat” Wallets

Leader: Phantom

Annual Revenue: approximately $105 million (around $35 million in Q3 2025)

User Count: approximately 15 million monthly active users

ARPU: about $7/user/year

Market Share: roughly 39% of the Solana wallet market

Performance and Fit:

Leveraging its dominant position in the Intent Layer, Phantom has become the leading consumer wallet on the Solana platform. Positioned upstream of Swap, NFT, Perps, and payments, Phantom monetizes user behavior before value reaches DEXes or protocols.

The launch of Phantom Perps saw trading volume surpass $1 billion within weeks. This confirms that the wallet is evolving from a passive interface into an active financial venue. Phantom's $150 million Series C funding in January 2025, valuing it at $3 billion, reflects market recognition of this shift.

Main Competitors:

• MetaMask: expanding monetization channels through integration of perpetual contracts and Swap, launching a $30 million LINEA incentive program to deepen ecosystem lock-in.
• Trust Wallet: over 200 million downloads, intercepted $162 million in scams, demonstrating strong distributed payment capabilities, though ARPU is relatively weak.

2. “Fat” Blockchain

Leader: Ethereum

Protocol Annual Revenue: about $300 million

Users: approximately 8.6 million MAU

ARPU: about $30-35/user/year

Performance and Fit:

Ethereum remains the core settlement layer in crypto. Its value does not stem from high-throughput consumer execution but from its role as the final arbiter for high-value transactions, MEV extraction, stablecoins, and financial settlements across Rollups and institutions.

Ethereum's fee base is supported by MEV, blob fees, and settlement demand, rather than simply transaction volume. This makes its growth slower than execution chains but more resilient as capital concentrates.

Main Competitors:

• Solana: leading “fat” execution chain, with peak monthly revenue around $240 million, driven by meme coins, perpetual trading, and consumer applications. Performance upgrades (Firedancer, Alpenglow) further solidify growth.
• Base: the fastest-growing L2 by active users, with triple-digit growth in transaction volume; Uniswap's total traded volume exceeds $200 billion—positioned as Ethereum's consumer execution branch.

3. “Fat” Perp DEX

Leader: Hyperliquid

Annual Revenue: approximately $950 million to $1 billion

Open Interest: about $6.5 billion

Perpetual Trading Volume (30 days): about $225 billion

Performance and Fit:

Perpetual contracts are the most profitable trading method in crypto, and Hyperliquid dominates this market. By integrating liquidity, execution, and order flow on a dedicated chain, Hyperliquid charges fees while avoiding MEV leakage and routing fragmentation.

In July 2025 alone, Hyperliquid accounted for about 35% of all blockchain protocol revenue and led all crypto projects in token buybacks.

Main Competitors:

• Lighter: rapid early growth, over $1 trillion in cumulative trading volume, about $300 billion monthly trading volume, but with lower profit margins.
• Drift: approximately $2 trillion in cumulative trading volume, $3.2 billion in TVL, about $49 million in revenue—strong growth but weaker market dominance.

4. “Fat” Lending

Leader: Aave

Annual Revenue: about $115 million

User Count: approximately 120,000 monthly active users

TVL: about $32-35 billion

Capital Utilization Rate: around 40%

Performance and Fit:

Aave is a leading DeFi lending platform. While lending profits are typically lower than trading platforms, Aave's scale, resilience, and stable institutional funding compensate for this.

The protocol is expected to surpass $3 trillion in total deposits by 2025, with active loans reaching about $29 billion. Lending growth is slow but steady.

Main Competitors:

• Fluid: leading liquidity layer, with cross-chain TVL around $5-6 billion, ranking third in lending, second in monthly active users, supporting efficient DEX trading (volume $150 billion, fees over $23 million).
• Morpho Blue: over $1 billion in deposits, the largest deposit protocol on Base, indicating a shift toward modular, market-driven lending models.

5. “Fat” RWA Protocols

Leader: BlackRock BUIDL

Asset Management Scale: about $2.3 billion

Yield: approximately 4% (tokenized US Treasuries)

Holders: fewer than 100 (institutional investors)

Performance and Fit:

Growth in RWA depends on scale and trust, not user numbers. BUIDL has expanded to seven blockchains and is accepted as collateral by CEXs, building a structural bridge between TradFi and on-chain finance.

Main Competitors:

• Ondo Finance: TVL over $1 billion, approved under MiCA, consolidating its position as a leading crypto-native RWA distributor.

6. “Fat” LRT / Re-staking Layer

Leader: EigenLayer

Re-staking Assets: about $12.4 billion

Annual Fee Revenue: approximately $70 million

User Count: about 300,000 to 400,000

Performance and Fit:

EigenLayer is a foundational re-staking layer, monetizing by leasing Ethereum's security to AVS. The launch of EigenCloud (EigenAI, EigenCompute) extends it into verifiable off-chain computation.

Main Competitors:

• Ether.fi: about $100 million in annual revenue, actively repurchasing ETHFI, with a strong consumer-facing profit model via Cash.

7. “Fat” Aggregator / Routing Layer

Leader: Jupiter

Annual Revenue: about $12 million

DEX Aggregator Trading Volume (30 days): about $46 billion

Market Share: roughly 90% of Solana aggregator volume

Performance and Fit:

Aggregators profit through decision-making authority. Jupiter captures value by controlling routing, pricing, and execution quality, intercepting spreads before liquidity providers.

Main Competitors:

• COWSwap: approximately $110 billion in cumulative trading volume, offering MEV protection, especially suitable for institutional traders.

8. “Fat” Stablecoin Issuers

Leader: Tether (USDT)

Circulating Supply: about $185 billion

Annual Revenue: over $10 billion

Treasury Holdings: about $135 billion

Performance and Fit:

Tether is the most profitable entity in crypto. Stablecoin issuers profit from yields on government bonds, making their structure superior to most protocols.

Main Competitors:

• USDC (Circle): about $78 billion in supply, growing rapidly but with lower profit margins.
• Ethena USDe: about $12 billion in supply, representing a challenger model driven by synthetic yields.

9. “Fat” Prediction Markets

Leader: Polymarket

Annual Revenue: (not disclosed)

Monthly Trading Volume: about $1.5-2 billion (peaking during major events)

User Count: about 200,000-300,000 active traders per month

Performance and Fit:

Prediction markets profit from attention and uncertainty. Their key structural advantage is information attraction. Liquidity concentrates where probabilities are perceived as most accurate. Once this trust cycle forms, challengers find it hard to establish meaningful trading depth.

Polymarket's popularity is not just due to active users but because it has become a global source of trending events—an extremely profitable form of attention.

Prediction markets represent a new “Fat” layer:

• Not dependent on TVL
• No market directional volatility involved
• Cost elasticity during event periods
• Strong narrative dissemination (probability of headlines)

This makes them one of the few crypto applications with positive convexity to macroeconomic and political fluctuations.

Main Competitors:

• Kalshi: regulated by the US CFTC, supports event trading in USD (e.g., sports/politics), sometimes surpassing Polymarket in volume, attracting TradFi interest, but still lagging in native crypto liquidity.

10. “Fat” MEV

Leader: Flashbots

Annual MEV Extraction: about $230 million

Total Managed MEV: over $1.5 billion

Performance and Fit:

MEV is an invisible tax on block space. Flashbots has institutionalized MEV extraction and redistribution, making it a critical infrastructure for Ethereum and Rollups.

Main Competitors:

• Jito: captured about 66% of Solana fees in Q1 2025 through MEV tips and BAM.
• Arbitrum: since launch, has collected about $10 million in fees, indicating MEV monetization is moving upstream.

Related: “Fat applications” are dead, welcome to the era of “Fat distribution.”