After the Tide Recedes: Which Web3 Projects Are Still Making Money

Author: Biteye Core Contributor @viee7227

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After the bubble subsides, what is the survival baseline for crypto projects?

In the era when stories could be told about anything and everything could be given high valuations, cash flow didn’t seem necessary. But things are different now.

VCs are retreating and liquidity is tightening. In this market environment, whether a project can make money and has positive cash flow has become the first filter to test the fundamentals.

In contrast, some other projects weather cycles with stable income. According to DeFiLlama data, in October 2025, the top three crypto projects by revenue generated $688 million (Tether), $237 million (Circle), and $102 million (Hyperliquid) respectively in a single month.

In this article, we want to talk about these projects with real cash flow. Most are centered around two things: trading and attention. The two most fundamental sources of value in the business world are no exception in crypto.

I. Centralized Exchanges: The Most Stable Revenue Model

It’s never been a secret in crypto that “exchanges make the most money.”

The main sources of revenue for exchanges are trading fees, listing fees, etc. Take Binance, for example—its spot and futures trading volumes account for 30-40% of the market for a long time. Even in the sluggish 2022 market, its annual revenue reached $12 billion, and it’s only higher in this bull cycle. (Data from CryptoQuant)

To sum it up: as long as there is trading, exchanges earn revenue.

Another example is Coinbase. As a publicly listed company, its data is more transparent. In Q3 2025, Coinbase reported $1.9 billion in revenue and $433 million in net profit. Trading income was the main source, contributing over half, with the rest coming from subscriptions and services. Other top exchanges like Kraken and OKX are also steadily profitable; Kraken reportedly generated about $1.5 billion in revenue in 2024.

The biggest advantage of these CEXs is that trading naturally brings income. Compared to projects still struggling to figure out a viable business model, these exchanges are already generating real revenue by charging for their services.

In other words, in this era where storytelling is increasingly difficult and hot money is dwindling, CEXs are among the few players that can survive on their own without financing.

II. On-Chain Projects: PerpDex, Stablecoins, Public Chains

According to DefiLlama data as of December 1, 2025, the top ten on-chain protocols by revenue in the past 30 days are shown in the chart below.

From this, we can see that Tether and Circle firmly occupy the top spots. Leveraging the interest rate spread behind USDT and USDC (U.S. Treasuries), these two stablecoin issuers each earned close to $1 billion in a month. Next is Hyperliquid, solidly “the most profitable on-chain derivatives protocol.” Additionally, the rapid rise of Pumpfun once again validates the old logic in crypto: “Selling coins is better than trading them, and selling tools is even better than selling shovels.”

It’s worth noting that dark horse projects like Axiom Pro and Lighter, although their overall revenue is not large, have already achieved positive cash flow.

2.1 PerpDex: Real Revenue for On-Chain Protocols

This year, the most outstanding PerpDex is Hyperliquid.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual contract platform using an independent chain and its own matching engine. Its rise has been rapid—just in August 2025, it completed $383 billion in trading volume and earned $106 million in revenue. Additionally, the project uses 32% of its revenue to buy back and burn the platform token. According to @wublockchain12’s report yesterday, the Hyperliquid team unlocked 1.75 million HYPE ($60.4 million), with no external funding and no sell pressure, as protocol revenue is used to buy back tokens.

For an on-chain project, this is already approaching the revenue efficiency of CEXs. More importantly, Hyperliquid truly earns money and gives back to its tokenomics, directly linking protocol income with token value.

Now let’s talk about Uniswap.

In recent years, Uniswap has been criticized for freeloading on token holders—for example, charging a 0.3% fee per transaction, all of which goes to LPs, with UNI holders not receiving any income.

That changed in November 2025, when Uniswap announced a protocol fee-sharing mechanism and planned to use a portion of historical revenue to buy back and burn UNI tokens. By estimates, if the mechanism had been implemented earlier, just the first ten months of this year would have provided $150 million for burning. Following the announcement, UNI surged 40% in a day. Although Uniswap’s market share has dropped from a peak of 60% to 15%, this proposal may reshape UNI’s fundamentals. However, after the proposal was released, @EmberCN observed that a UNI investor, possibly Variant Fund, transferred millions of UNI to Coinbase Prime, likely to sell at the higher price.

Overall, the old DEX model of airdrop-driven speculation is becoming less viable. Only those projects with stable revenue and a closed business loop are likely to retain users.

2.2 Stablecoins and Public Chains: Earning Interest Passively

Beyond trading-related projects, another group of infrastructure projects continues to attract funds—most notably, stablecoin issuers and high-frequency public chains.

Tether: The Perpetual Money Printing Giant

The company behind USDT, Tether, has a very simple revenue model: whenever someone deposits $1 in exchange for USDT, Tether invests that dollar in low-risk assets like government bonds and short-term notes, earning interest for itself. With global rate hikes, Tether’s income has soared. In 2024, net profit reached $13.4 billion, and is expected to surpass $15 billion in 2025, rivaling traditional finance giants like Goldman Sachs. @Phyrex_Ni recently noted that Tether’s rating was downgraded but it remains a cash cow, earning passive income from over $130 billion in U.S. Treasuries as collateral.

Circle, the issuer of USDC, has a slightly smaller circulation and net profit, but its total revenue for 2024 also exceeded $1.6 billion, with 99% coming from interest income. Circle’s profit margin isn’t as high as Tether’s, partly because of a revenue-sharing agreement with Coinbase. In short, stablecoin issuers are money printers—they don’t rely on storytelling or fundraising, but on users’ willingness to deposit funds with them. In bear markets, these “savings-type” projects actually thrive. @BTCdayu also believes stablecoins are a great business—printing money and collecting interest worldwide, and sees Circle as the king of passive stablecoin profits.

Public Chains: Relying on Traffic Instead of Incentives

Looking at mainnet public chains, the most direct monetization is via gas fees. Data below from Nansen.ai:

Over the past year, if we look only at total chain transaction fee income, we can better see which chains have truly converted usage into value. Ethereum’s annual revenue was $739 million, still the main source, but down 71% year-over-year due to the Dencun upgrade and L2 migration. By contrast, Solana’s annual revenue reached $719 million, up 26% year-over-year, with significant increases in user activity and interactions driven by the Meme and AI Agent trend. Tron’s revenue was $628 million, up 18% year-over-year. Bitcoin’s annual revenue was $207 million, mainly impacted by declining inscription trading fervor.

BNB Chain’s annual revenue reached $264 million, up 38% year-over-year—the fastest growth among major public chains. Although its revenue is still lower than ETH, SOL, and TRX, its growing transaction volume and active addresses indicate expanding on-chain use cases and a more diversified user base. BNB Chain shows strong user retention and genuine demand. This stable and growing revenue structure provides more definite support for its ecosystem’s ongoing evolution.

These public chains are like “water sellers”—no matter who’s panning for gold in the market, everyone needs their water, electricity, and roads. As infrastructure, they may lack short-term explosiveness but win out in stability and resilience.

III. The KOL Business: Monetizing Attention

If trading and infrastructure are the explicit business models, then the attention economy is the “hidden business” of crypto—think KOLs, agencies, and so on.

This year, crypto KOLs have become the center of attention flow.

KOLs active on X, Telegram, and YouTube leverage personal influence for diversified income: paid promotions, community subscriptions, courses, and other monetization streams. Industry rumors say mid-tier and above crypto KOLs can make $10,000/month from promotions. Meanwhile, audiences are demanding higher content quality, so KOLs who can weather cycles are usually those who have earned user trust through expertise, judgment, or deep engagement. This is quietly reshuffling the content ecosystem in the bear market: the fickle leave, the long-termists stay.

Another noteworthy aspect of attention monetization is KOL round financing. This allows KOLs to directly participate in the primary market: obtaining project tokens at a discount, providing promotional exposure, and earning “early chips from influence”—a model that bypasses VCs.

A whole matchmaking service ecosystem has developed around KOLs as well. Agencies act as traffic intermediaries, matching projects with suitable KOLs—the whole chain increasingly resembles an advertising placement system. If you’re interested in KOL and agency business models, refer to our previous article “Inside the KOL Round: A Wealth Experiment Driven by Traffic” ( ), for a deep dive into the real interest structures behind the scenes.

In short, the attention economy is essentially trust monetization—and trust is even scarcer in a bear market, making monetization more challenging.

IV. Conclusion

Projects that maintain cash flow during the crypto winter mostly validate the two pillars of “trading” and “attention.”

On one hand, whether centralized or decentralized, as long as trading platforms have steady user activity, they can generate continuous income through fees. This direct business model allows them to be self-sufficient when capital retreats. On the other hand, KOLs focused on user attention monetize user value through ads and services.

In the future, we may see more diverse models, but regardless, projects that accumulate real revenue during bear markets are more likely to lead new development cycles. Conversely, those relying solely on storytelling without self-sustaining capability may enjoy short-term speculation but will ultimately be ignored.