After the Tide Goes Out: Which Web3 Projects Are Still Profitable?

Original Article Title: "After the Tide Goes Out: Which Web3 Projects Are Continuously Making Money"

Original Article Author: Viee, Biteye

After the bubble bursts, what is the survival bottom line for crypto projects?

In an era where anything can be a story and anything can have a high valuation, cash flow didn't seem necessary. But things are different now.

VCs are pulling back, and liquidity is tightening. In such a market environment, the ability to make money, the presence of positive cash flow, has become the first litmus test to assess a project's fundamentals.

On the other hand, some projects rely on stable income to weather the cycles. According to DeFiLlama data, as of October 2025, the top three revenue-generating crypto projects could respectively generate $688 million (Tether), $237 million (Circle), and $102 million (Hyperliquid) in a month.

In this article, we want to discuss these projects with real cash flow. Most of them revolve around two things: transactions and attention. The two most fundamental sources of value in the business world are no exception in the crypto space.

Centralized Exchanges: The Most Stable Revenue Model

In the crypto space, the fact that "exchanges are the most profitable" has never been a secret.

The primary sources of revenue for exchanges include transaction fees, listing fees, etc. Take Binance, for example. With its daily spot and derivatives trading volume, it has consistently accounted for 30-40% of the entire market. Even in the quietest market conditions of 2022, its annual revenue was $12 billion, and during a bull market cycle, revenue will only increase (data from CryptoQuant).

In summary: as long as there is trading, exchanges can generate revenue.

Another example is Coinbase. As a publicly traded company, its financials are more transparent. In the third quarter of 2025, Coinbase reported revenue of $19 billion and a net profit of $4.33 billion. Trading revenue is the primary source, contributing over half, with the remaining revenue coming from subscription and service revenue, among others. Other top exchanges like Kraken and OKX are also steadily making money, with Kraken reportedly generating around $15 billion in revenue in 2024.

The biggest advantage of these centralized exchanges is that trading naturally brings in revenue. Compared to many projects still worrying about whether their business model will work, these exchanges are already making solid income through service fees.

In other words, in this stage where storytelling is becoming increasingly difficult and hot money is becoming scarcer, CEX is one of the few players who can survive without funding and rely solely on their own resources.

On-chain Projects: PerpDex, Stablecoins, Public Chains

According to data from DefiLlama as of November 27, 2025, the top ten on-chain protocols with the highest revenue in the past 30 days are shown in the graph below.

From the graph, we can see that Tether and Circle are firmly at the top. Leveraging the U.S. Treasury yield spread behind USDT and USDC, the two stablecoin issuers made nearly $1 billion in just one month. Following closely is Hyperliquid, firmly holding the title of "the most profitable on-chain derivative protocol." In addition, projects like Pumpfun rising rapidly once again validate the old logic in the crypto industry that "selling shovels is better than mining gold."

It is worth noting that underdog projects such as Axiom Pro and Lighter, although their overall revenue scale is not large, have also found a positive cash flow path.

PerpDex: Real Revenue of On-chain Protocols

This year, the most outstanding performer in PerpDex is undoubtedly Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual contract platform that operates on its own chain with an integrated matching engine. Its explosion was quite sudden, achieving a trading volume of $383 billion and revenue of $106 million in August 2025 alone. Additionally, the project allocates 32% of its revenue to buy back and burn platform tokens. According to a report by @wublockchain12 yesterday, the Hyperliquid team unlocked 1.75 million HYPE (60.4 million), with no external funding and no selling pressure, using protocol revenue to repurchase tokens.

For an on-chain project, this is already close to the revenue efficiency of a CEX. More importantly, Hyperliquid has truly earned money, reinvested it into the tokenomic system, and established a direct connection between protocol revenue and token value.

Now, let's talk about Uniswap.

Over the past few years, Uniswap has been criticized for free-riding on token holders, such as charging a 0.3% fee per transaction but giving it all to LP, with UNI holders not receiving any income.

Until November 2025, Uniswap announced plans to activate a protocol fee-sharing mechanism and use a portion of historical revenue to repurchase and burn UNI tokens. According to estimates, if this mechanism had been implemented earlier, the funds available for burning in just the first ten months of this year would have been as high as $150 million. Upon this news, UNI surged by 40% on the same day. Although Uniswap's market share has dropped from its peak of 60% to 15%, this proposal may still reshape the fundamental logic of UNI. However, after the proposal was announced, @EmberCN observed that an investment firm holding UNI tokens (possibly Variant Fund) transferred millions of $UNI ($27.08 million) to Coinbase Prime, seemingly to drive up the price and liquidate positions.

Overall, the previous DEX model that relied on airdrops for hype to pump the price has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Only projects that truly generate stable income and complete a commercial cycle are likely to retain users.

Stablecoins and Public Blockchains: Earning Passive Income through Interest

Apart from transaction-related projects, a number of infrastructure projects are also continuously attracting funds. Among them, the most typical ones are stablecoin issuers and highly utilized public blockchains.

Tether: The Continuous Money Printer

The company behind USDT, Tether, has a very simple revenue model: whenever someone deposits 1 USD in exchange for USDT, that money is used by Tether to purchase Treasury bonds, short-term notes, and other low-risk interest-bearing assets, with the interest accruing to them. With global interest rates rising, Tether's income has also surged. Its net profit reached 13.4 billion USD in 2024 and is expected to surpass 15 billion USD in 2025, approaching traditional financial giants like Goldman Sachs. @Phyrex_Ni recently stated in a post that although Tether's rating has been downgraded, it is still a cash cow, earning over 130 billion USD in interest income through a cushion of collateral mainly in U.S. Treasury bonds.

On the other hand, the USDC issuer, Circle, although slightly smaller in terms of circulation scale and net profit, also generated over 1.6 billion USD in total revenue in 2024, with 99% of it coming from interest income. It is worth noting that Circle's profit margin is not as exaggerated as Tether's, partly due to revenue sharing with Coinbase. In essence, stablecoin issuers are money printers; they do not rely on storytelling for fundraising but on users willing to hold their money with them. Ironically, in a bear market, these savings-oriented projects thrive even more. @BTCdayu also believes that stablecoins are a good business, earning interest from printing money worldwide, and expresses optimism that Circle is the king of stablecoin passive income.

Public Blockchains: Thriving on User Activity rather than Incentives

Looking at mainnet public blockchains, the most direct way to monetize is through Gas fees. The following data is from Nansen.ai:

Over the past year, by solely examining the total transaction fee revenue of public chains, it is clearer to see which chains have truly translated into utility. Ethereum's annual revenue stands at 739 million USD, remaining the primary income source, but experiencing a 71% year-over-year decline due to the EIP-1559 upgrade and L2 offloading. In contrast, Solana achieved an annual revenue of 719 million USD, a 26% year-over-year increase, driven by the Meme and AI Agent trends, leading to a significant rise in user activity and interaction frequency. Tron's revenue is 628 million USD, showing an 18% year-over-year growth. Bitcoin's annual revenue is 207 million USD, primarily affected by the decline in on-chain transaction fervor, resulting in a substantial overall drop.

BNB Chain's annual revenue reached $264 million, a 38% year-on-year growth, ranking first in growth rate among mainstream public chains. Although the revenue scale is still lower than that of ETH, SOL, and TRX, considering its transaction volume and growth in active addresses, it is evident that its on-chain utility is expanding, the user base is becoming more diverse, and BNB Chain overall shows strong user retention and real demand. This stable revenue growth structure also provides clearer support for its ecosystem's continuous evolution.

These public chains are like "water sellers"; no matter who is gold mining in the market, they always have to use their water, electricity, and roads. Although this infrastructure project may not have short-term explosive power, it excels in stability and countercyclicality.

Business Around KOLs: Attention Can Also Monetize

If transactions and infrastructure are the overt business models, then the attention economy is the "covert business" in the crypto world, such as KOLs, Agencies, and so on.

So far this year, crypto KOLs have become the center of attention flow.

High-profile figures active on Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, leverage their personal influence to pursue diversified revenue models: from paid promotions, community subscriptions, to course monetization and a series of traffic businesses. According to industry rumors, mid- to top-tier crypto KOLs can earn $10,000 per month from promotions. At the same time, the audience's demand for content quality is also increasing. Therefore, KOLs who can withstand market cycles are often those creators who have gained user trust through professionalism, judgment, or deep engagement. This inadvertently drives the reshuffling of the content ecosystem in the bear market, with the impetuous ones exiting and the long-term thinkers staying.

Of note is the third layer of attention monetization, KOL token financing. This allows KOLs to become direct participants in the primary market: acquiring project tokens at a discount, undertaking traffic exposure tasks, and exchanging for "early chips brought by influence," bypassing VCs directly.

Surrounding KOLs themselves, a whole set of matchmaking services has emerged. Agencies are starting to play the role of traffic intermediaries, matching projects with suitable KOLs, making the entire chain more and more like an advertising delivery system.

In summary, the attention economy is essentially a trust monetization, and trust, in a bear market, becomes even scarcer, raising the monetization threshold.

Conclusion

Projects that can maintain cash flow in the crypto winter mostly confirm the two cornerstones of "transactions" and "attention."

On one hand, whether it is a centralized or decentralized trading platform, as long as there is a robust user trading behavior, they can obtain continuous revenue through transaction fees, enabling them to be self-sufficient even when capital exits. On the other hand, KOLs focusing on user attention monetize user value through advertisements and services.

In the future, we may see more diverse patterns, but regardless, projects that have accumulated real income during market downturns will have a better chance of leading new developments. Conversely, some projects that rely solely on storytelling and lack the ability to generate revenue may eventually be ignored, even if they experience a short-term hype.

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