Is the bull market here? As cryptocurrencies mature and institutions become more interested in cryptocurrencies, the fundamentals of projects will become increasingly important. Protocols with high revenue, large market demand, and positive returns are likely to outperform the market over a longer time frame. This article is a list of the six major cash cows of DeFi by crypto KOL Thor Hartvigsen.

MakerDAO

Revenue: $166.2 million

MKR FDV (fully diluted valuation): $1.05 billion

Maker makes money from fees on the collateral backing DAI.

55% of revenue comes from RWA collateral, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. The rest comes from fees on on-chain collateral such as stETH, ETH, and wBTC.

Maker currently puts most of its revenue into the Dai Savings Rate (DSR) treasury. The goal is to increase the supply of Dai. More Dai supply means more collateral, which means more revenue generated.

Maker has big plans for the future, including a complete rebranding of MKR and DAI (the final plan).

Rollbit

Revenue: $364 million

RLB FDV: $607 million

Rollbit, a gambling platform on the Solana chain, has generated huge revenue from its casino, sports betting platform, and cryptocurrency futures trading. Part of the revenue will be used to purchase and destroy RLB:

  • 30% Futures (1000x contract)

  • 20% Sportsbook

  • 10% Casino

Given current revenues, that's $55 million worth of RLB burned per year. At these prices, that's 9% of circulating supply. At higher prices, the structural impact on supply is smaller, but the narrative around this alone could bring about another rally.

Ethereum

Revenue: $2.1 billion

ETH FDV: $197 billion

Ethereum is the largest revenue-generating on-chain entity in all of crypto (excluding centralized companies like Tether) and the only blockchain with positive returns, meaning revenue is greater than token incentives.

Ethereum revenue is the amount of ETH burned per transaction. Based on the current annualized revenue, $2.1 billion worth of ETH is burned every year.

GMX

Revenue: $39.4 million

GMX FDV: $507 million

Revenue is calculated as fees paid to GMX investors. Recently, GMX has lost market share to competitors such as Synthetix, Level, Vertex, etc., as many of them have superior features than GMX V1.

The recently launched V2 has made many upgrades to the trading experience, including cheaper fees and more assets.

Due to the balance of open interest and the isolated market, the risk faced by LPs is further reduced.

Decision

Revenue: $62.3 million

ARB FDV: $9.56 billion

Arbitrum is the largest revenue generating blockchain after Ethereum (above BNB Chain, Polygon, etc.). Arbitrum remains the largest L2 ecosystem in terms of liquidity and dapps being built.

From a technical perspective, Arbitrum also stands out in terms of decentralization. Compared to Arbitrum, Optimism and OP Chains have not yet enabled fraud proofs. The recently announced Arbitrum Bold further supports permissionless state verification.

dYdX

Revenue: $83.2 million

DYDX FDV: $2.13 billion

Whether from the perspective of UI/UX or transaction fees, dYdX provides the on-chain trading experience that is closest to CEX.

V4 is scheduled for release in late September, when dYdX will be released on its own Cosmos chain. As more traders turn to the chain and trading volume picks up in a potential bull run, head perp DEXs like dYdX have huge upside potential.

Once V4 is launched, DYDX may further increase its revenue, which means that a large amount of revenue generated by dYdX will flow to DYDX stakers.

The table below compares the above and valuates them based on revenue. As shown, the price/revenue valuations of MKR and RLB are pretty crazy. The author reminds that none of the above constitutes investment advice.