Original Article Title: "After the Tide Goes Out: Which Web3 Projects Are Continuing to Make 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 tell a story and anything can have a high valuation, cash flow seems not to be necessary. But now it's different.

Venture capitalists are retreating, and liquidity is tightening. In such a market environment, whether a project can make money, whether it has positive cash flow, has become the first hurdle to test the project's fundamentals.

In contrast, some projects rely on stable income to survive the cycles. According to DeFiLlama data, as of October 2025, the top three revenue-generating crypto projects could generate $688 million (Tether), $237 million (Circle), and $102 million (Hyperliquid) respectively in one 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 make the most money" has never been a secret.

The main sources of revenue for exchanges include transaction fees, listing fees, and more. Take Binance, for example. With its daily spot and derivatives trading volume, it has long accounted for three to four tenths of the entire market. Even in the quietest market of 2022, its annual revenue reached $12 billion, and during a bull market cycle, its revenue will only be more, not less. (Data from CryptoQuant)

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

Another example is Coinbase. As a publicly traded company, its data disclosures are more transparent. In the third quarter of 2025, Coinbase had a revenue of $19 billion and a net profit of $4.33 billion. Trading revenue is the main source, contributing over half, with the remaining revenue coming from subscriptions and service revenues, among others. Other exchanges such as Kraken and OKX are also steadily making money. Kraken reportedly had a revenue of about $1.5 billion in 2024.

The greatest advantage of these centralized exchanges is that trading naturally brings revenue. Compared to many projects still worrying about whether their business models will work, they are already charging service fees for real.

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 by revenue in the past 30 days are shown in the chart below.

From the chart, we can see that Tether and Circle are firmly at the top. Leveraging the U.S. Treasury yield spread behind USDT and USDC, the issuers of these two stablecoins earned nearly $1 billion in just one month. Following closely is Hyperliquid, which consistently ranks as the "most profitable on-chain derivative protocol." Additionally, rapid risers like Pumpfun once again validate the old logic in the crypto industry that "selling shovels is more profitable than mining for gold."

It's worth noting that dark horse projects such as Axiom Pro and Lighter, although their overall revenue scale is small, have also found a positive cash flow path.

PerpDex: Real Revenue of On-chain Protocols

This year, one of the most outstanding performers in PerpDex is undoubtedly Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual contract platform built on its own chain with self-matching. Its rise was quite sudden. In just one month in August 2025, it completed $383 billion in trading volume, with revenue reaching $106 million. Furthermore, the project uses 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 revenue efficiency is already close to that of a CEX. More importantly, Hyperliquid has actually earned money and then reinvested it back into the tokenomic system, establishing 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 freeloading off token holders, such as charging a 0.3% fee per transaction, but giving it all to LPs, with UNI holders receiving no income.

It wasn't until November 2025 that Uniswap announced plans to introduce 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, funds available for burning in just the first ten months of this year would have reached $150 million. Upon the news, UNI surged 40% on the same day. Although Uniswap's market share has dropped from 60% at its peak to 15%, this proposal could still reshape the fundamental logic of UNI. However, following the release of this proposal, @EmberCN detected an institutional investor in UNI (possibly Variant Fund) transferring millions of $UNI ($27.08 million) to Coinbase Prime, presumably to pump up the price before selling off.

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

Stablecoins and Public Chains: Earning Passive Income through Interest

Apart from trading-related projects, there is also a group of infrastructure projects that continue to attract investment. Among them, the most typical are stablecoin issuers and heavily used public chains.

Tether: The Continuous Money Printer

The company behind USDT, Tether, has a very simple revenue model: every time someone deposits 1 US dollar in exchange for USDT, that money is used by Tether to purchase government bonds, short-term notes, and other low-risk interest-bearing assets, with the interest going back to Tether. As global interest rates rise, Tether's income also soars. The net profit reached $13.4 billion in 2024, and is expected to exceed $15 billion in 2025, approaching traditional financial giants like Goldman Sachs. @Phyrex_Ni recently stated that although Tether's rating has been downgraded, it is still a cash cow, earning over $130 billion through lying down on U.S. debt securities as collateral.

On the other hand, the USDC issuer, Circle, while slightly smaller in circulation scale and net profit, also had a total revenue of over $1.6 billion in 2024, with 99% coming from interest income. It should be noted that Circle's profit margin is not as exaggerated as Tether's, partly because of revenue sharing with Coinbase. In essence, stablecoin issuers are money-making machines. They do not rely on storytelling for funding but rather on users willing to keep their money with them. Ironically, these savings-type projects thrive even more in bear markets. @BTCdayu also believes that stablecoins are a good business, making money through interest from around the world, and is optimistic that Circle is the king of earning passive income through stablecoins.

Public Chains: Dining on Traffic Instead of Incentives

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

Over the past year, by only looking at the total transaction fee revenue of public chains, it is clearer to see which chains have truly translated into utility. Ethereum's annual revenue is $739 million, still the main source of income, but due to the EIP-1559 upgrade and L2 scaling, it has decreased by 71% year-on-year. In comparison, Solana's annual revenue reached $719 million, a 26% year-on-year increase, achieving a significant increase in user activity and interaction frequency driven by the Meme and AI Agent craze. Tron's revenue is $628 million, an 18% year-on-year increase. Bitcoin's annual revenue is $207 million, primarily affected by the decline in on-chain transaction popularity, showing a significant overall decline.

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

These public chains are like "water sellers," no matter who is mining in the market, they always need to use their water, electricity, and roads. This kind of infrastructure project, although lacking short-term explosive power, excels in stability and countercyclicality.

Business Around KOLs: Attention Can Also Be Monetized

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 attention traffic hubs.

Mega influencers active on platforms like Twitter, Telegram, and YouTube have developed diversified income models leveraging their personal influence: 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, audience demand for content quality is also increasing, so KOLs who can endure through cycles are often those creators who have gained user trust in professionalism, judgment, or in-depth engagement. This inadvertently drives the reshuffling of the content ecosystem in bear markets, with the impetuous exiting and the long-term oriented staying.

Of note is the third layer of attention monetization, KOL token financing rounds. This enables KOLs to directly become key 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 has also spawned a whole set of matchmaking services. Agencies are beginning to play the role of traffic intermediaries, matching projects with suitable KOLs, and the entire chain is increasingly resembling an advertising delivery system.

In conclusion, the attention economy is fundamentally a trust monetization, and trust, being more scarce in bear markets, paradoxically raises the monetization threshold.

Conclusion

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

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

In the future, we may see more diverse patterns, but regardless, projects that have accumulated real income during market downturns will be more likely to lead new developments. On the other hand, some projects that rely solely on storytelling and lack sustainable development may, even if they experience a short-term hype cycle, ultimately end up being ignored.

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