Inventory of the top 10 "money-making" protocols: From Ethereum to Pump.fun, who is leading the crypto trend?

Original title: "Inventory of the top 10 "money-making" protocols, insight into 3 major industry cycle trends"

Original author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

In the crypto world, there is no "eternal profit myth", but there is a "money-making legend".

In October, which just ended, according to Dune data, pump.fun's cumulative income exceeded 160 million US dollars, the total number of addresses exceeded 2.4 million, and the total number of deployed tokens exceeded 2.8 million; currently, its cumulative income has reached 167.3 million US dollars. In other words, in just about 4 days, pump.fun, as the "strongest money-making machine" in this cycle, has increased its income by about 7.3 million US dollars again, which is terrifying.

Combined with the revenue data of various agreements in the past year, Odaily Planet Daily will classify and inventory the top 10 "most profitable agreements" in this article. In the process of looking through the changes in the industry cycle, it will reveal the trend of the wind direction for the reference of readers.

A comprehensive inventory of money-making machines: 42 major projects have exceeded US$30 million in revenue in the past year, and there are mainly 4 categories

According to the data from the DefiLlama website, if the time is narrowed to less than 1 year, the current 42 major project protocol revenues have exceeded US$30 million, which can be mainly divided into the following categories:

Blockchain ecology: L1 network is still the "mainstream money-making behemoth"

Looking closely at the list of "players with protocol revenue exceeding US$30 million", we can clearly see that in the past ten years of development of the blockchain ecology, the L1 public chain network is still the most mainstream "money-making behemoth", among which:

· Ethereum took the lead with a revenue of US$2.57 billion in the past year;

· Bitcoin took the lead with a revenue of US$2.57 billion in the past year;

· TRON, positioned as a "stablecoin network", earned $515 million;

· Solana benefited from the Meme coin craze that has been in full swing this year and earned $407 million;

· BSC (i.e. BNB Chain) benefited from the Binance exchange and earned up to $180 million;

· Avalanche is more due to a wave of explosive growth at the end of 2023, with monthly protocol revenue increasing from US$2.5 million to US$52.25 million.

Overall, although the L1 ecosystem has a very bumpy road to development, it is still the main "pillar" supporting the crypto world, and Ethereum's protocol revenue of US$19.367 billion (as of November 3, 2024) is indeed daunting. This also shows from the side that as the largest ecosystem in the crypto world, Ethereum is indeed far from the desperate situation of "running out of money and ammunition" as many people say.

Some representative ecosystems

Infrastructure projects: stablecoins and DEXs have become "money-making experts"

Another category of projects ranked at the top of the "money-making rankings" are many infrastructure projects including stablecoins, pledge protocols, and DEXs, among which -

1. Tether, the issuer behind USDT, and Circle, the issuer behind USDC, ranked at the top with $16.17 billion and $516 million in protocol revenue in the past year respectively;

2. Uniswap, Raydium, PancakeSwap and other DEXs are in the second tier of such projects, with protocol revenues ranging from $350 million to $820 million in one year.

Some representative projects

Application projects: Wallets and Meme coin platforms are "money-making machines"

As for specific application projects, the previous "industry hot spots" - wallet applications and the theme track "Meme coin platform" of this round of cycles have become the "money-making machines" with the largest proportion. Among them -

pump.fun (platform note: Pump) ranks 16th with a nearly one-year agreement income of US$146 million;

pump.fun ranked 16th

MetaMask (commonly known as the Little Fox Wallet) ranked 28th with a one-year contract revenue of US$70.49 million.

MetaMask ranked 28th

Expansion projects: L2 and service platforms are "new money-making platforms"

In addition to the above main categories, there are many "expansion projects" that have ranked at the top of the protocol revenue in the past year - such as Ethereum L2 networks including Base, Arbitrum, ZKsync Era, and Optimism, among which -

1. Base ranked 26th with a protocol revenue of US$73.02 million in the past year;

2. Arbitrum ranked 32nd with a protocol revenue of US$56.19 million in the past year;

3. ZKsync Era ranked 38th with a protocol revenue of US$36.74 million in the past year 4. Optimism ranks 41st with $33.96 million in contract revenue in the past year. Some representative ecosystems Service platforms are more diverse, including OpenSea, the former "NFT market king", as well as aggregated trading platforms such as DEX Screener, as well as Photon, BONKbot, Trojan, Banana Gun, Maestro and other Telegram ecosystem trading bots. Of course, as we can see from the figure below, Solana ecology is still the main focus of these projects. Some representative projects

Inventory of the top 10 "most profitable" protocols, a look at the most "profitable" tracks in crypto

Based on the above information and data from the DefiLlama website, we can screen out the following representative "profitable projects" based on the total protocol revenue data -

1. Ethereum, with a total protocol revenue of $19.369 billion;

2. Uniswap, with a total protocol revenue of $5.697 billion;

3. BTC, with a total protocol revenue of $4.144 billion;

4. BSC (BNB Chain), with a total protocol revenue of $2.857 billion;

5. OpenSea, with a total protocol revenue of $2.783 billion;

6. Lido, with a total protocol revenue of $1.939 billion;

7. Tether, with a total protocol revenue of $1.684

8. PancakeSwap, with total protocol revenue of $1.614 billion;

9. TRON, with total protocol revenue of $1.17 billion;

10. AAVE, with total protocol revenue of $961 million.

Project Ranking Summary

Summary: Compared with the "version answer", the long-term is the king

To be fair, in my personal opinion, the coming and going of "money-making protocols" also reflects the changes in the encryption industry from the side:

· Before 2020, the most money-making protocols were undoubtedly the public chains that started with various IC0s. Ethereum has also stood out since then, laying the foundation for today's market value of 300 billion US dollars;

· In the 2020-2022 period, the Ethereum ecosystem has become the "center of the cryptocurrency industry". Driven by waves of industry trends such as DeFi Summer, GameFi Summer, and NFT Summer, Uniswap, Axie Infinity, STEPN, OpenSea and other platforms and projects in the corresponding tracks have emerged one after another, taking up the banner of attracting money in the industry;

· In the 2023-2024 period, that is, this round of cycle, first appeared the "SocialFi golden product" with friend.tech as the benchmark, and then the "MemeFi MVP" represented by pump.fun was produced. The "golden black hole" of the crypto industry has become an "asset issuance platform" that controls both liquidity and attention.

But if we look closely at the protocol revenue rankings over the past year or even over a longer period of time, the version answer is at best a new player in the "money-making track". As for whether they can survive the early and middle stages of the product life cycle and still ensure that they "do not leave the table" and "stay on the field" in the later stages, it is still an unknown at present.

Compared to countless "one-wave" "protocols and applications", perhaps a long-lasting ecosystem is still the best "money-making weapon".

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