Summary: From competing for pricing power at the infrastructure layer to competing for user access, we take a look at 20 Crypto trading frontends to see who’s quietly making money—and why this business is booming.
Author: Changan | Biteye Content Team
Over the past few years, Crypto entrepreneurs have raced to build public blockchains and protocols, hoping to control the underlying technology and capture the fees. The more capital and transactions they attract, the greater their chances of making money.
But as the underlying infrastructure has matured, another kind of business has emerged: instead of developing an entire trading system from scratch, you can simply plug into existing protocols and focus on the product experience and winning users.
More interestingly, some of these seemingly unremarkable trading frontends can make tens of millions of dollars a month—more than many platforms that operate their own trading systems. Wallets, trading terminals, and social apps are also joining in, competing for the same pool of traders.
Why is the Crypto business shifting from competing for pricing power to competing for users and trading volume? And who stands to make the most money from this shift?
🌟I. Which Crypto frontend sectors are the most profitable?
Using access to third-party trading infrastructure and at least $100,000 in revenue over the past 30 days as our main criteria, we identified 20 representative Crypto trading frontends.
Meme platforms make up the largest group, with seven projects, including GMGN and Axiom. Even after all these years, Meme remains one of Crypto’s most popular trading sectors. Token prices rise and fall, and trends come and go, but trading terminals that sell the picks and shovels can keep earning from trading activity.
Next are Perp DEXs, with five platforms. Futures trading is a huge market in its own right, and traders often open and close positions frequently, generating a steady stream of fees. As platforms such as Hyperliquid open up their trading capabilities, third-party frontends can also claim a share of this vast market.
Prediction markets have the fewest, with just two. Third-party frontends in this sector are still competing for users, and many products compete with zero add-on fees or low rates. Trading volume may be substantial, but the revenue they can actually retain is limited, making them the smallest group under our revenue criteria.
The remaining six are all-in-one platforms. Wallets such as Phantom, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet already have large user bases and hold substantial assets. By adding trading features such as swaps and perps, they can turn existing traffic into new fee revenue. Fomo represents a new approach based on social trading, using content and social connections to drive trading activity.
🌟II. How do these six frontends earn millions of dollars a month?
We’ve looked at how the different sectors are distributed. Next, let’s take a closer look at the six leading frontends that generated more than $1 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Although they all rely on other protocols to execute trades, they attract users and generate revenue in different ways.
1. Fomo focuses on social trading, attracting users through social content and creators, then earning revenue from trading activity
2. Axiom and GMGN are established trading terminals rooted in the Meme sector. They have built up large communities of professional traders and earn fees from high-frequency trading
3. Phantom, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet are wallets with huge user bases. By adding more trading services, they turn existing users into new sources of revenue.
1️⃣Fomo @fomo｜XHunt ranking: 729
Fomo is a social trading app designed for everyday users. Its biggest draw is that it lowers the barriers to onchain trading. Users don’t need to understand different blockchains, wallets, or gas fees—they can simply deposit USDC and buy and sell assets across different chains.
Beyond the trading experience, Fomo also builds social features into the product. Users can follow other people’s trading activity and copy their trades directly.
More interestingly, it has also changed how Crypto creators make money. In the past, KOLs mainly monetized through ads and project promotions. Now, by sharing trade calls on Fomo, they can also earn a share of the fees generated by trades made by their followers.
Fomo not only makes trading easier for newcomers, but also gives creators a new way to turn their influence directly into trading revenue.
2️⃣Axiom @AxiomExchange｜XHunt ranking: 3173
Axiom is a leading Meme trading terminal in the Solana ecosystem. Features such as fast order execution and trending token discovery have helped it build a large base of active traders.
But as competition in the Meme trading market intensifies, especially with the rise of a new generation of social trading platforms such as Fomo, Axiom has also started looking for new avenues for growth.
Over the past two or three months, Axiom has noticeably accelerated its expansion. It launched a new asset management page in August, upgraded its BNB Chain trading features in September, and gradually expanded into ecosystems such as Base and Ink. It’s no longer focused solely on Solana.
Axiom is clearly no longer content with being just a Meme trading tool. It wants to bring market tracking, social features, and trading together, gradually moving toward becoming a Super App.
3️⃣GMGN @gmgnai｜XHunt ranking: 2030
GMGN is one of the Meme trading platforms best known in the Chinese-speaking Crypto community. Its Chinese-friendly interface and features such as smart money tracking have earned it a loyal user base.
However, as social trading platforms have risen, GMGN has also begun to change. It recently launched perpetual futures and added social features such as Callout (trade signals) and trading leaderboards. It has even integrated Fomo users’ callout records into candlestick charts.
Recently, founder Haze has also been posting job openings frequently to expand the product and community teams. As it moves from being a Meme trading tool toward a comprehensive trading platform, GMGN clearly doesn’t want to stick to its old business model.
4️⃣Phantom @phantom｜XHunt ranking: 174
Phantom is a wallet success story that emerged from the Solana ecosystem. Thanks to its simple, user-friendly experience, it once reached nearly 17 million monthly active users and raised funding in 2025 at a $3 billion valuation.
Over the past year, it has gradually added Hyperliquid futures, prediction markets, and social feeds, and even launched a payment card, aiming to let users trade, socialize, and make everyday purchases in a single app.
According to DefiLlama data, Phantom generated more than $7 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Most of it still came from token swaps and cross-chain services in the wallet, while futures trading contributed around $1.2 million.
5️⃣MetaMask @MetaMask｜XHunt ranking: 117
MetaMask is one of the oldest wallets in the Ethereum ecosystem and was once practically essential for getting onchain. But its user experience has improved little over the years, gradually prompting many users to switch to other wallets.
In response to competition, MetaMask has also begun to accelerate its transformation. It has integrated Hyperliquid futures and the Polymarket prediction market, aiming to evolve from a wallet tool into a comprehensive trading platform.
According to DefiLlama data, MetaMask generated around $3.72 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Traditional wallet transactions still contributed around $2.23 million, while Hyperliquid futures contributed around $1.29 million.
Interestingly, MetaMask once made money from its first-mover advantage as a wallet. Now it has no choice but to compete again for users’ trading activity.
6️⃣Trust Wallet @TrustWallet｜XHunt ranking: 1338
A wallet that supports a range of cryptocurrencies. In addition to storing assets, users can buy and sell tokens, transfer funds across chains, and trade futures directly in the app.
Recently, Trust Wallet asked 21 business leads to create X accounts and communicate directly with users. It’s clear the team is investing more in user growth and community management.
At the same time, its revenue model is changing.
According to DefiLlama data, Trust Wallet generated around $1.93 million in revenue over the past 30 days. Of that, $1.56 million came from Hyperliquid perpetual futures trading, accounting for over 80%, while traditional wallet services such as swaps and cross-chain transfers contributed only around $370,000.
Trust Wallet used to make most of its money from users storing and swapping tokens. Now, futures trading accounts for the lion’s share of its revenue.
🌟III. Why has the frontend become a key battleground if it doesn’t build the underlying infrastructure?
Fun fact: Phantom earns more trading revenue through Hyperliquid than TradeXYZ does.
Fomo could be considered the culmination of this wave of frontend innovation. It brings together cross-chain trading, social feeds, and creator revenue sharing, allowing KOLs to earn fees by sharing trade calls. This trend has also attracted new players such as SmartX, while established terminals like GMGN and Axiom have added social features of their own.
Trading frontends are competing for more than the fee from a single trade—they’re competing for all of a user’s future trading activity.
A single trading gateway can support many lines of business. Today, it can attract users with Meme trading; tomorrow, it can add futures, prediction markets, and even payments and wealth management. Each new service offers a chance to generate more revenue from the existing user base.
A report by Re7 Capital shows that third-party frontends’ share of trading in the perpetual futures market has grown from less than 1% in early 2025 to around 20% this August.
That’s why wallets, trading terminals, and social platforms are all competing for this gateway. Wallets hold users’ assets, trading terminals build up users’ trading habits, and social platforms have creators and fans. They start from different places, but all want users to do more trading within their products.
🌟IV. Final thoughts
Over the past few years, Crypto has invested heavily in infrastructure to make trading faster and cheaper. But for most people, complicated processes involving wallets, cross-chain transfers, and gas fees remain barriers to getting into Crypto.
Trading frontends are now trying to change that. They keep the complicated processes behind the scenes, letting users trade as easily as they would use an ordinary app. Fomo’s rapid growth has also shown us the demand for this kind of simple experience.
In a report this year, Binance Research suggested that wallets, trading platforms, and fintech apps are gradually converging toward the same kind of product: one account and one balance that can support an ever-growing range of financial activities.
This also means that frontends may eventually compete for more than just Crypto traders. As U.S. stocks, prediction markets, payments, and other services move onchain, frontends could become a one-stop gateway for ordinary people to manage assets, invest, and spend.
Crypto has spent years working to bring more assets and financial services onchain. In the next phase, what may be worth watching most closely is who can make these services easy for more everyday users to access.
And these seemingly ordinary trading frontends may well be where that transformation begins.