Author: Nancy, PANews
Recently, the TCG project Collector Crypt has strongly entered the global revenue leaderboard Top 10, and at one point even topped Solana’s highest-earning protocol, sparking heated discussion in the community.
While most crypto projects are still struggling to survive the bear market, Collector Crypt has become one of the few money-printing machines in the market thanks to its strong profitability. The tokenized TCG niche represented by Collector Crypt is bringing the fun of collecting and gacha to the blockchain, rapidly capturing attention in the crypto market.
Are on-chain TCGs “outperforming” NFTs? Solana takes 80% of the market
Since last year, TCG (trading card games) that blend IP, collecting, social, and gaming attributes has been entering a new round of growth, with market enthusiasm continuing to climb.
This TCG boom has also started to migrate on-chain. Since 2025, a number of tokenized TCG players have gradually emerged in the crypto market, including Collector Crypt, Phygitals, Courtyard, Ready Cards, Beezie, and others.
Compared with traditional physical trading cards, tokenized TCGs significantly improve liquidity and trading efficiency, while also reducing risks such as counterfeit cards and theft. These advantages are especially evident for high-value cards. However, because they heavily rely on centralized vaults and custody systems, market concerns have also arisen: if a platform shuts down or there is a problem with the vault, users could suffer asset losses.
To address the above issues, some on-chain platforms have started introducing more comprehensive real-world asset anchoring and risk-control mechanisms. For example, Collector Crypt has a physical storage and insurance vault of about 28,000 square feet in the U.S. state of Montana to store real card assets, and it enhances asset transparency and user trust through certification and endorsements via rating systems such as PSA.
Benefiting from the sustained prosperity of the physical collectibles market and the growing demand for asset tokenization, the on-chain TCG market has entered a phase of rapid growth in recent months, becoming one of the more prominent sub-sectors in the current crypto bear market.
Artemis data shows that in June 2026, trading volume in the on-chain TCG market surpassed $490 million, up 7.6x year over year. Monthly active users are about 5,300, up about 253.3% year over year. Total protocol monthly cumulative revenue across protocols is about $11.8 million, up more than 1.8x year over year.
Looking at the NFT sector instead, CryptoSlam data shows that in the same period, the NFT market’s trading volume is about $150 million. Although both are on-chain digital collectible assets, TCGs demonstrate higher user engagement and trading activity. The main reasons are: they combine the real value support of physical trading cards; the sustained usage scenarios brought by competitive and gaming attributes; and the high liquidity, asset composability, and global circulation enabled by on-chain trading.
From the perspective of the public-chain ecosystem, current tokenized TCG projects are mainly deployed on mainstream chains such as Solana, BNB Chain, Polygon, Base, and others. Among them, Solana—thanks to technological advantages, first-mover effects, and breakout applications like Collector Crypt—has become the core battleground for tokenized TCG. According to Artemis data, Solana has captured 80.8% of the on-chain TCG market, far surpassing other public chains, and has become the most active and most liquid ecosystem for tokenized TCG.
However, from the perspective of the overall market, on-chain TCG is still in an early development stage. A report by Global Market Insights estimates that the global TCG market size is expected to reach or exceed about $9.2 billion by 2026, and the market value is expected to reach $16.9 billion by 2035.
Compared with the massive physical market, the penetration rate of on-chain TCG is still limited. This also means there is still substantial room for growth in asset on-chain onboarding, trading infrastructure, and global liquidity.
Collector Crypt dominates alone—97% of its revenue is propped up by whales
The explosive growth in this current on-chain TCG track cannot be separated from Collector Crypt’s push. As the most dominant project in the current track, it has already widened a clear gap with other platforms in terms of trading scale, revenue capability, and market share.
Artemis data shows that since its launch, Collector Crypt’s cumulative trading volume has exceeded $1.4 billion, and cumulative protocol revenue has reached $68 million—far ahead of other on-chain TCG platforms.
Looking at the market performance over the past week, Collector Crypt’s trading volume is about $127 million, accounting for 74.3% of the entire on-chain TCG market. In the same period, other platforms’ trading volumes are mostly only a few million dollars or even lower. In terms of revenue, Collector Crypt’s protocol revenue over the same week is about $5.2 million, while other platforms generally have only tens of thousands of dollars, and some are even in a loss state.
Beyond continuously widening its lead in the on-chain TCG space, Collector Crypt’s profitability capability has also started to place it among the top tier of the overall crypto industry.
Recently, Collector Crypt has entered the top ten in the network-wide protocol revenue rankings alongside protocols such as Tether, Circle, and Hyperliquid, meaning it already has the commercial capability to compete with leaders in mature tracks such as DeFi and stablecoins. Meanwhile, according to DeFiLlama data, as of June 26, Collector Crypt has become the #2 protocol by Solana revenue, second only to Meme printing machine Pump.fun.
In fact, since the beginning of this year, almost all of Collector Crypt’s key operating metrics have entered a phase of rapid growth.
Artemis data shows that in June this year, the platform’s monthly trading volume surpassed $330 million, up about 3.4x from January’s $97.5 million. In the same period, monthly active users grew from 276 to 735, up about 2.6x. Protocol revenue increased from $4.4 million to $13.4 million, up more than 3x.
However, while Collector Crypt is experiencing rapid growth, it is also facing pressure on profitability. According to Blockworks data, as of June 26, the platform has generated cumulative total revenue of $707 million, but net revenue is only $46.33 million, with a revenue retention rate of approximately 6.5%. Meanwhile, driven by factors such as an increasing share of high-priced, low-gross-margin booster packs and an extremely high immediate buyback rate, Collector Crypt’s gross margin has continued to decline, falling to 2.74% as of June 24, down significantly from 6.03% at the beginning of the year.
Not only that—looking at the user structure, Collector Crypt’s revenue still heavily depends on a small number of high-net-worth players, effectively earning it the moniker “whale paradise” for on-chain TCGs.
Dune data shows that over the past six months, the platform has about 14,594 on-chain paying users, contributing nearly $500 million in trading volume. Among them, only 80 players spent more than $1 million (0.6% of total users), contributing 51.8% of revenue; 522 users spent between $100,000 and $1 million (3.6%), contributing 35.6% of revenue; and users spending between $10,000 and $100,000 (10.4%) contributed 9.7% of revenue. By contrast, users who make up more than 42.1% of the total user base and spent less than $250 contributed only about 0.1% of revenue. In other words, currently Collector Crypt has about 14.6% of users contributing roughly 97.1% of the platform’s revenue.
This highly concentrated revenue structure, on the one hand, reflects that Collector Crypt’s high-net-worth users have strong payment ability and spending stickiness, bringing significant profitability potential to the platform, but it is also difficult to completely rule out wash trading behavior. On the other hand, this also implies that for the platform to achieve sustainable, scalable growth, it still needs to expand its user base and reduce reliance on trades from a small number of whales.
With daily active users of less than 1,000, why has Collector Crypt made it into the top ten by revenue?
One of the important reasons driving Collector Crypt’s trading surge is the on-chain gacha (lottery) mechanism launched by the platform. This model borrows the card-splitting (pack opening) gameplay from traditional TCGs: through randomized rewards, scarce cards, and instant feedback, it continuously amplifies players’ sense of anticipation and willingness for repeat spending, becoming the core engine of the platform’s trading growth.
So far, Collector Crypt has become the largest on-chain gacha market on Solana, capturing about 87.4% market share.
Blockworks and Artemis data show that in June alone, the platform’s gacha (gashapon) trading volume reached $127 million, contributing nearly all of the platform’s total trading volume. At the same time, the cumulative value of opened packs surpassed $100 million, nearly doubling compared with the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, the number of participants has continued to grow. As of June 23, the platform’s daily active gacha users reached 811, whereas in the previous few months it was typically below 300.
It is worth noting that Collector Crypt’s high trading volume comes not only from increased activity, but also from the large consumption consistently contributed by the whale users mentioned earlier. Blockworks data shows that the average gacha spending per user is as high as $7,829, and it even rose to $9,858 at one point over the past two months.
Besides the gacha mechanism, the Pokémon IP and the tokenomics model have also become important drivers for Collector Crypt’s continued growth.
Among them, the Pokémon IP is the platform’s most core source of traffic. Blockworks data shows that in June this year, the tokenized collectibles value (TCV) on the Collector Crypt platform reached $26.1 million, with about 73.8% coming from Pokémon cards. In popular pack-opening products, about 76% of the packs are from the Pokémon series, and the Pokémon packs priced at $1,000 account for nearly half of all opened pack quantities. In other words, high-quality IP is still an important foundation driving user spending and trading.
On the other hand, the CARDS token builds a growth flywheel for the platform. Since its launch, Collector Crypt has cumulatively released 4.75% of the CARDS supply to the community, including an initial 2.5% token distribution at the TGE stage, plus three rounds of quarterly airdrops, each releasing 0.75%. The most recent quarterly airdrop is valued at about $4 million.
Compared with simply offering airdrop incentives, Collector Crypt has also built a dual buyback mechanism: on the one hand, it immediately repurchases card assets to provide ongoing liquidity for trading; on the other hand, it uses protocol revenue to continuously buy back CARDS tokens to strengthen token value support.
As the platform’s trading continues to grow, protocol revenue increases in parallel, and the CARDS buyback scale expands accordingly. Meanwhile, rising token prices further stimulate users to participate in trading, pack openings, and holding, creating a flywheel effect.
As a result, CoinGecko data shows that CARDS’ cumulative increase since the beginning of this year has exceeded 412%, and the current FDV is $510 million. Recently, Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom has also given a target price of $4 for CARDS for the end of summer in a research report, further boosting market attention.
It is worth noting that according to a report disclosed by Maelstrom Fund analyst Lukas Ruppert, wallets related to Collector Crypt’s operating center have collectively cashed out $45.7 million worth of USDC.
Need to note that the CARDS token will continue to unlock over time. Currently, Collector Crypt has completed about 23.6% of its token unlocks; the remaining tokens will remain locked until November 2027. The next unlock will take place on June 29, expected to release about 28.84 million CARDS tokens, valued at roughly $7.46 million. In addition, the official recently disclosed that an early investor from a Pre-Seed round has sold about $1.5 million worth of CARDS tokens to a certain liquidity fund through over-the-counter trading.
As operating funds flow out, tokens continue to unlock, and early backers’ chips begin to cash out, the circulating chips in the market will gradually increase. Investors need to keep monitoring potential short-term selling pressure.
Overall, the rise of Collector Crypt validates the viability of an on-chain TCG business model and has also pushed this sector into a phase of rapid development. However, on-chain TCG is still at an early stage of development, leaving substantial room for growth in user acquisition, asset supply, and infrastructure, among other areas.