- Onchain Revenue Becomes $20 Billion Economic Powerhouse with DeFi dominating 2025 Onchain Earnings
- Reduction in Transaction Fees Results in 126% Application Growth, YoY
NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — 1kx, an early stage VC focused on investing in transformative blockchain technologies today released its inaugural Onchain Revenue Report, the first to aggregate onchain fee data across more than 1,000 protocols. The report explores the correlation between onchain revenue generation and the maturation of the industry, allowing institutions, investors, and crypto-natives to better understand the valuation of blockchains and applications.
The report conducts proprietary analysis on data synthesized from leading analytics platforms including Dune, TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, and CoinGecko, with protocol classifications consolidated into six core areas: Blockchains, Middleware, DePIN, DeFi/Finance, Wallets, and Consumer.
Notable Trends, Key Takeaways, and Report Findings
Users paid $9.7B in onchain fees in H1 2025, the second-highest level on record since H2 2021. At that time, generation was driven by billions of dollars in user-rewards, incentive-related speculation and a few costly Proof of Work blockchains. Today, fees are generated primarily by applications, led by financial use cases but expanding rapidly into DePINs, Wallets, and consumer apps, each with >200% YoY growth.
Now, to support the next wave of mass adoption, the industry has successfully introduced infrastructure that prioritizes efficiency. As a result, transaction costs have fallen over 90% from 2021 highs. Simultaneously, regulatory easing has opened previous barriers to investor participation. Together, these milestones signal a more mature phase of digital asset monetization, where growth in protocol value creation and investability increasingly align. As the analysis shows, value distribution to token holders is at an all-time high, demonstrating how efficiency gains enable meaningful income circulation.
- Onchain Revenue Becomes $20 Billion Economic Powerhouse
- DeFi Dominates Onchain Earnings in 2025
- Maturing blockchain technology has led to a reduction in transaction fees, paving the way for explosive growth in applications at 126% YoY
- Asset prices are an obvious revenue driver, but more cost-efficient infrastructure is now moving the needle as well
- While the top 20 protocols drive 70% of revenue, innovators can disrupt incumbents with unprecedented velocity
- Though applications demonstrate greater causality between revenue and valuation than blockchains, the latter still dominates market cap
- Tokenization, DePIN, Wallets and Consumer are the high-growth areas to watch
- With further regulatory tailwinds, 2026 onchain fees are projected to reach 60% YoY growth at $32+ Billion, all of which is attributable to application growth
Robert Koschig, Head of Economics at 1kx, commented on the report: “With the digital asset space as the next frontier of global capital markets, it is more critical than ever to understand the underlying factors determining the true value of a business, project, or application. The revenue report is a comprehensive resource with the latest verifiable insights to help investors make informed decisions as decentralized projects grow. For projects seeking global capital through token issuance, disclosing income figures and onchain mechanisms is crucial to demonstrate tangible business performance as well as potential upside for investors in the new digital economy.”
Why do onchain user-paid fees matter?
As digital tokens are integrated into capital markets as an investable asset class, onchain fee generation provides a clear, quantifiable metric of a protocol’s real-world utility and economic value. This signals true user engagement and demand – sustainable product-market fit – beyond purely monetary or store-of-value use cases. In networks’ journey to achieve sustainable PMF, generating consistent fee-based revenue distinguishes mature protocols from early-stage experiments.
For investors, disclosure of onchain fees revolutionizes access to real-time, auditable performance data, eliminating their reliance on systemically inefficient processes like delayed disclosures or third-party audits, often present in traditional finance today. For protocols issuing tokens to attract a global investor base, visible onchain fees are becoming an essential snapshot of adoption trends, network health, and the potential for institutional-grade investment opportunities.
1kx will continue to release subsequent reports on a semi-annual basis, with detailed analysis on cost savings, user engagement, and investor demand in onchain ecosystems.
About 1kx
1kx is a leading global investment firm specializing in blockchain technologies. Founded in 2018 by tech entrepreneurs Lasse Clausen and Chris Heymann, the firm is driven by a mission to support the builders shaping the future of blockchain technology. As one of the top-performing and most institutionalized funds in the blockchain space, 1kx partners with a diverse global investor base, including sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, foundations, fund of funds, corporations, and family offices. Renowned for its hands-on approach, deep technical expertise, and unwavering long-term commitment to founders, 1kx has empowered over 150 visionary startups to scale transformative projects while delivering outstanding returns for its investors.
To explore our historical research and thesis work, visit https://1kx.capital/ or @1kxnetwork on X.
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