Author: Stacy Muur

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

The original "fat protocol" theory posited that the value of cryptocurrencies would disproportionately flow to the underlying blockchain rather than the applications. This view is no longer valid.

By 2026, value will flow to the "control points": interfaces that grasp user intent, trading venues that internalize liquidity, issuers that hold balance sheets, and entities that can tokenize inefficient assets. Regardless of which chain ultimately prevails, which application becomes popular, or which narrative dominates, these entities will be able to collect fees.

This ranking clearly illustrates where value is truly becoming "fat" at various layers today, why it is becoming fat, and where the next wave of marginal value will flow based on metrics such as revenue, user numbers, ARPU (average revenue per user), market dominance, and capital efficiency.

1. "Fat" Wallets

Leader: Phantom

Annual Revenue: Approximately $105 million (around $35 million in Q3 2025)

User Count: Approximately 15 million monthly active users

ARPU: Approximately $7/user/year

Market Position: Approximately 39% of the Solana wallet market share

Performance and Match:

Phantom has become the dominant consumer wallet on the Solana platform due to its leading position in the Intent Layer. The wallet is upstream of Swap, NFTs, Perps, and payments, allowing Phantom to monetize user behavior before value reaches DEX or protocols.

The launch of Phantom Perps saw trading volume exceed $1 billion within weeks. This confirms that wallets are evolving from passive interfaces to active financial venues. Phantom's $150 million Series C funding completed in January 2025, with a valuation of $3 billion, reflects market recognition of this shift.

Main Competitors:

• MetaMask: Expanding monetization channels by integrating perpetual contracts and Swap, launching a $30 million LINEA incentive program to deepen ecosystem lock-in.
• Trust Wallet: Over 200 million downloads, intercepted $162 million in scams, demonstrating strong distributed payment capabilities, but with relatively weak ARPU.

2. "Fat" Blockchains

Leader: Ethereum

Protocol Annual Revenue: Approximately $300 million

Users: Approximately 8.6 million monthly active users (MAU)

ARPU: Approximately $30-35/user/year

Performance and Match:

Ethereum remains the core settlement layer in the crypto space. Its value does not come from high throughput consumer execution but from its role as the ultimate arbiter of high-value transactions, MEV extraction, stablecoins, and financial settlements across Rollups and institutions.

Ethereum's fee base is supported by MEV, blob fees, and settlement demand, rather than merely transaction volume. This makes its growth rate slower than execution chains, but it is more defensively positioned as capital concentrates.

Main Competitors:

• Solana: The leading "fat" execution chain, with peak monthly revenue reaching approximately $240 million, driven by meme coins, perpetual trading, and consumer applications. Performance upgrades (Firedancer, Alpenglow) further solidify growth momentum.
• Base: The fastest-growing L2 by activity, with triple-digit growth in trading volume, and Uniswap's cumulative trading volume exceeding $200 billion—positioned as Ethereum's consumer execution branch.

3. "Fat" Perp DEX

Leader: Hyperliquid

Annual Revenue: Approximately $950 million to $1 billion

Open Contracts: Approximately $6.5 billion

Perpetual Trading Volume (30 days): Approximately $225 billion

Performance and Match:

Perpetual contracts are the most profitable trading method in the crypto space, and Hyperliquid monopolizes this market. Hyperliquid achieves fee collection 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 about 35% of all blockchain protocol revenue and led all crypto projects in token buybacks.

Main Competitors:

• Lighter: Rapid early development, cumulative trading volume exceeding $1 trillion, with monthly trading volume around $300 billion, but lower profit margins.
• Drift: Cumulative trading volume of approximately $2 trillion, TVL around $3.2 billion, revenue approximately $49 million—strong growth but weaker market dominance.

4. "Fat" Lending

Leader: Aave

Annual Revenue: Approximately $115 million

Users: Approximately 120,000 monthly active users

TVL: Approximately $32-35 billion

Capital Utilization Rate: Approximately 40%

Performance and Match:

Aave is the leading lending platform in the DeFi space. Although lending profit margins are typically lower than trading platforms, Aave compensates for this with its scale, resilience, and stable institutional funding.

The protocol is expected to accumulate deposits exceeding $3 trillion by 2025, with active loan sizes reaching approximately $29 billion. Lending business growth is slow but steady.

Main Competitors:

• Fluid: Leading liquidity layer, with cross-chain total locked value of approximately $5-6 billion, ranking third in lending, second in monthly active users, and supporting efficient DEX trading (trading volume $150 billion, fees exceeding $23 million).
• Morpho Blue: Deposits exceeding $10 billion, the largest protocol by deposit size on the Base chain, indicating a shift towards modular, market-driven lending models.

5. "Fat" RWA Protocols

Leader: BlackRock BUIDL

Assets Under Management: Approximately $2.3 billion

Yield: Approximately 4% (tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds)

Holders: Fewer than 100 (institutional investors)

Performance and Match:

The growth of RWA relies on scale and trust rather than user numbers. BUIDL has expanded to seven blockchains and has been accepted as collateral by CEX, marking a structural bridge between TradFi and on-chain finance.

Main Competitors:

• Ondo Finance: TVL exceeding $1 billion and received MiCA approval, solidifying its position as a leading crypto-native RWA distributor.

6. "Fat" LRT / Re-staking Layer

Leader: EigenLayer

Re-staked Assets: Approximately $12.4 billion

Annual Fee Revenue: Approximately $70 million

User Count: Approximately 300,000 to 400,000

Performance and Match:

EigenLayer is a foundational re-staking layer that monetizes by renting Ethereum's security to AVS. The launch of EigenCloud (EigenAI, EigenCompute) expands it into verifiable off-chain computation.

Main Competitors:

• Ether.fi: Annual revenue approximately $100 million, actively buying back ETHFI, achieving a strong consumer-facing profit model.

7. "Fat" Aggregators / Routing Layer

Leader: Jupiter

Annual Revenue: Approximately $12 million

DEX Aggregator Trading Volume (30 days): Approximately $46 billion

Market Share: Approximately 90% of Solana's aggregator trading volume

Performance and Match:

Aggregators profit through decision-making power. Jupiter captures value by controlling routing, pricing, and execution quality, intercepting spreads before liquidity providers.

Main Competitors:

• COWSwap: Cumulative trading volume approximately $110 billion, providing MEV protection, especially suitable for institutional traders.

8. "Fat" Stablecoin Issuers

Leader: Tether (USDT)

Circulating Supply: Approximately $185 billion

Annual Revenue: Over $10 billion

Treasury Holdings: Approximately $135 billion

Performance and Match:

Tether is the most profitable entity in the crypto space. Stablecoin issuers achieve profitability through yields from Treasury bonds, structurally positioning them above most protocols.

Main Competitors:

• USDC (Circle): Supply approximately $78 billion, growing rapidly but with lower profit margins.
• Ethena USDe: Supply approximately $12 billion, representing a challenger model driven by synthetic yields.

9. "Fat" Prediction Markets

Leader: Polymarket

Annual Revenue: (Not disclosed)

Monthly Trading Volume: Approximately $1.5-2 billion (peaking during major events)

User Count: Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 monthly active traders

Performance and Match:

Prediction markets achieve profitability through attention and uncertainty. Their key structural advantage lies in information gravity. Liquidity concentrates where probabilities are deemed most accurate. Once this credibility loop forms, challengers find it difficult to establish meaningful trading depth.

Polymarket's popularity is not due to sustained user activity but because it has become a global source for trending events—a highly profitable form of attention.

Prediction markets represent a new "fat" layer:

• Not reliant on TVL
• Not involving market directional volatility
• High fee elasticity during event occurrences
• Strong narrative propagation (probabilities becoming headline news)

This makes them one of the few crypto applications with positive convexity to macroeconomic and political fluctuations.

Main Competitors:

• Kalshi: Regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Kalshi supports event trading prioritized by U.S. fiat (e.g., sports/politics), with trading volume sometimes exceeding Polymarket, attracting TradFi attention, but currently lagging in crypto-native liquidity.

10. "Fat" MEV

Leader: Flashbots

Annual MEV Extraction: Approximately $230 million

Cumulative Managed MEV: Over $1.5 billion

Performance and Match:

MEV is an invisible tax on block space. Flashbots has institutionalized the extraction and redistribution of MEV, making it a key infrastructure for Ethereum and Rollups.

Main Competitors:

• Jito: Captured approximately 66% of Solana's fees through MEV tips and BAM in Q1 2025.
• Arbitrum: Has collected approximately $10 million in fees since launch, indicating that MEV capitalization is shifting upstream.

Related Reading: The "Fat Applications" Are Dead, Welcome to the Era of "Fat Distribution"

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