Author:Stacy Muur
Translated by: Felix, PANews
The original "fat protocol" theory suggested that the value of cryptocurrencies would disproportionately flow to the underlying blockchains rather than to the applications. This view is no longer valid today.
By 2026, value will flow toward "control points": interfaces that master user intent, trading venues that internalize liquidity, issuers that hold balance sheets, and entities capable of tokenizing inefficient assets. Regardless of which chain ultimately prevails, which application becomes popular, or which narrative dominates, these entities will capture fees.
This ranking clearly illustrates where value is truly becoming "fattened" today, why it is happening, and where the next wave of marginal value will flow, based on indicators such as revenue, user base, ARPU (average revenue per user annually), market dominance, capital efficiency, and more.
1. "Fat" wallet
Leader: Phantom
Annualized revenue: approximately 105 million U.S. dollars (about 35 million U.S. dollars in the third quarter of 2025)
Number of users: Approximately 15 million monthly active users
ARPU: About $7/user/year
Market Position: Holds approximately 39% of the Solana wallet market share.
Performance and Fit:
Phantom has become the leading consumer wallet on the Solana platform due to its dominance in the intent layer. Positioned upstream of Swap, NFTs, Perps, and payments, Phantom enables monetization of user behavior before value reaches DEXs or protocols.
The launch of Phantom Perps saw trading volume exceed $10 billion within weeks. This confirms that wallets are evolving from passive interfaces into active financial hubs. Phantom's $150 million Series C funding round, completed in January 2025, at a $3 billion valuation, reflects the market's recognition of this transformation.
Main competitors:
- MetaMask: Expanding Monetization Channels Through Perpetual Contracts and Swap Integration, Launching the 30-Million-Dollar LINEA Incentive Program to Strengthen Ecosystem Lock-in.
- Trust Wallet: Over 200 million downloads accumulated, has blocked $162 million in fraud, demonstrating strong decentralized payment capabilities, but relatively weak ARPU.
2. "Fat" blockchain
Leader: Ethereum
Annualized revenue from the agreement: approximately 300 million USD
User: Approximately 8.6 million monthly active users (MAU)
ARPU: About $30–$35 per user per year
Performance and Fit:
Ethereum remains the core settlement layer in the crypto space. Its value does not come from high-throughput consumer execution, but rather from its role as the final arbiter for high-value transactions, MEV extraction, stablecoins, and financial settlements across rollups and institutions.
Ethereum's base fee is supported by MEV, blob fees, and settlement demand, rather than transaction volume alone. This makes it grow at a slower pace compared to execution chains, but as capital becomes more concentrated, its defensiveness becomes stronger.
Main competitors:
- Solana: The leading "thick" execution chain, with peak monthly revenue reaching up to approximately $240 million, and experiencing rapid growth driven by memecoins, perpetual trading, and consumer applications. Performance upgrades (Firedancer, Alpenglow) are further solidifying its growth momentum.
- Base: The fastest-growing L2 by activity, with triple-digit growth in transaction volume, and Uniswap's cumulative trading volume exceeding $200 billion — positioned as Ethereum's consumer execution layer.
3. "Fat" Perp DEX
Leader: Hyperliquid
Annualized revenue: approximately 950 million to 1 billion U.S. dollars
Open interest: approximately $6.5 billion
30-day perpetual trading volume: approximately $22.5 billion
Performance and Fit:
Perpetual contracts are the most profitable trading method in the crypto space, and Hyperliquid has monopolized this market. Hyperliquid generates fees by integrating liquidity, execution, and order flow on a single dedicated chain, avoiding MEV leakage and routing fragmentation.
In July 2025 alone, Hyperliquid accounted for approximately 35% of all blockchain protocol revenue and led all crypto projects in token buybacks.
Main competitors:
- Lighter: Rapid early development, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $1 trillion, and a monthly trading volume of approximately $300 billion, but with lower profit margins.
- Drift: Total trading volume of approximately $2 trillion, TVL of around $3.2 billion, and revenue of about $49 million—showing strong growth, but with relatively weak market dominance.
4. "Fat" Lending
Leader: Aave
Annualized Revenue: Approximately 115 million USD
User: Approximately 120,000 monthly active users
TVL: Approximately $32 to 35 billion USD
Capital Utilization Rate: Approximately 40%
Performance and Fit:
Aave is a leading lending and borrowing platform in the DeFi space. Although lending typically generates lower profit margins compared to trading platforms, Aave compensates for this with its scale, resilience, and steady institutional capital.
This protocol is projected to accumulate over $3 trillion in deposits by 2025, with active loan volumes reaching approximately $29 billion. The lending and borrowing business is growing slowly but steadily.
Main competitors:
- Fluid: A leading liquidity layer with a cross-chain total value locked of approximately $5 to 6 billion, ranking third in the lending sector and second in monthly active users. It also supports efficient DEX trading (with a trading volume of $150 billion and fees exceeding $23 million).
- Morpho Blue: With deposits exceeding $10 billion, it is the largest protocol in terms of total deposits on the Base chain, indicating a shift toward modular, market-driven lending models.
5. "Fat" RWA Protocols
Leader: BlackRock BUIDL
Asset under management: approximately 2.3 billion U.S. dollars
Yield: Approximately 4% (Tokenized U.S. Treasury Securities)
Holder: Less than 100 (institutional investors)
Performance and Fit:
The growth of RWA depends on scale and trust, rather than user numbers. BUIDL has expanded to seven blockchains and has been accepted as collateral by CEXs, marking the establishment of a structural bridge between TradFi and on-chain finance.
Main competitors:
Ondo Finance: TVL exceeds $1 billion, and it has received MiCA approval, solidifying its position as a leading crypto-native RWA issuer.
6. "Fat" LRT / Restaking Layer
Leader: EigenLayer
Restaked Assets: Approximately $1.24 Billion
Annualized commission income: approximately 70 million USD
Number of users: approximately 300,000 to 400,000
Performance and Fit:
EigenLayer is a fundamental restaking layer that generates revenue by leasing Ethereum's security to AVSs. The introduction of EigenCloud (EigenAI, EigenCompute) expands it into verifiable off-chain computation.
Main competitors:
Ether.fi: Annualized revenue of approximately $100 million, actively repurchasing ETHFI, and achieving a strong consumer-focused monetization model through Cash.
7. "Fat" Aggregator / Routing Layer
Leader: Jupiter
Annualized Revenue: Approximately 12 million USD
DEX Aggregator Volume (30 Days): Approximately $46 Billion
Market Share: Accounts for approximately 90% of Solana aggregator trading volume.
Performance and Fit:
Aggregators profit through decision-making power. Jupiter captures value by controlling routing, pricing, and execution quality, and it captures the spread before liquidity providers.
Main competitors:
COWSwap: Total trading volume of approximately $110 billion, with MEV protection, especially suitable for institutional traders.
8. "Fat" Stablecoin Issuers
Leader: Tether (USDT)
Circulating Supply: Approximately $18.5 Billion
Annualized revenue: Over $10 billion
Treasury Holdings: About 135 billion USD
Performance and Fit:
Tether is the most profitable entity in the crypto space. The stablecoin issuer generates profits through treasury yield from its reserve assets, making it structurally superior to most protocols.
Main competitors:
- USDC (Circle): Circulating supply of approximately $7.8 billion, growing rapidly but with lower profit margins.
- Ethena USDe: A supply of approximately $12 billion, representing a challenger model driven by synthetic yields.
9. "Fat" Market Predictions
Leader: Polymarket
Annualized Income: (Not Disclosed)
Monthly trading volume: approximately 1.5-2 billion USD (peaking during major events)
Number of users: Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 monthly active traders
Performance and Fit:
Prediction markets profit through attention and uncertainty. Their key structural advantage lies in information gravity. Liquidity concentrates where the most accurate probability assessments are believed to exist. Once such a credibility cycle is established, it becomes difficult for challengers to build meaningful trading depth.
Polymarket's popularity is not due to sustained user activity, but rather because it has now become a source of globally trending events—a form of attention with significant profit potential.
Predictive markets represent a new "fat" layer:
- TVL-agnostic
- Not related to directional market fluctuations.
- High cost flexibility during the event period
- Strong narrative appeal (high probability of becoming a headline news)
This makes them one of the few crypto applications with positive convexity to macroeconomic and political volatility.
Main competitors:
Kalshi: Regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Kalshi supports event trading primarily in U.S. fiat currency (e.g., sports/politics). Its trading volume sometimes even exceeds that of Polymarket, drawing attention from traditional finance (TradFi). However, it still lags in native crypto liquidity.
10. "Fat" MEV
Leader: Flashbots
Annualized MEV Extraction: Approximately $230 Million
Total Managed MEV: Over $1.5 Billion
Performance and Fit:
MEV is an implicit tax on block space. Flashbots has institutionalized the extraction and redistribution of MEV, making it a critical infrastructure component for Ethereum and rollups.
Main competitors:
- Jito: Captured approximately 66% of Solana transaction fees through MEV tips and BAM in the first quarter of 2025.
- Arbitrum: Has collected approximately $10 million in fees since its launch, indicating that MEV capitalization is shifting upstream.
Related Reading:The Era of "Fat Apps" Is Over; Welcome to the Age of "Fat Distribution"