Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
In the crypto world, there is no 'ever-profitable myth', but there are 'money-sucking legends'.
In October, according to Dune data, pump.fun accumulated earnings exceeded $160 million, with total addresses exceeding 2.4 million and total deployed tokens exceeding 2.8 million; currently, the cumulative earnings number has reached $167.3 million, meaning that in just about 4 days, as the 'strongest money-sucking machine' of this cycle, pump.fun's earnings increased by about $7.3 million, which is terrifying.
Combining various protocol revenue data from the past year, Odaily Planet Daily will classify and summarize the top 10 'strongest money-sucking protocols' in this article, revealing the waves of trend direction while observing changes in industry cycles for readers' reference.
Overview of money-sucking machines: 42 major projects have reported over $30 million in revenue in the past year, mainly divided into 4 categories.
According to DefiLlama website data, narrowing the timeframe to within 1 year, there are currently 42 major projects whose protocol revenue exceeds $30 million, which can be mainly divided into the following categories:
Blockchain ecosystem: L1 networks remain 'mainstream money-sucking giants'.
Looking closely at this list of 'protocols with revenue over $30 million', we can clearly see that during the decade of blockchain ecosystem development, L1 public chain networks remain the most mainstream 'money-sucking giants', among which:
Ethereum leads with nearly $2.57 billion in revenue over the past year;
Bitcoin ranks second with nearly $1.323 billion in revenue over the past year;
TRON positions itself as a 'stablecoin network' with $515 million in revenue;
Solana benefits from this year's booming Meme coin craze with $407 million in revenue;
BSC (BNB Chain) benefits from backing by Binance, achieving $180 million in revenue;
Avalanche saw an explosive growth at the end of 2023, with monthly protocol revenue increasing from $2.5 million to $52.25 million.
Overall, despite the extremely rugged and bumpy development path of the L1 ecosystem, it remains the main 'support beam' of the crypto world. Ethereum's staggering total protocol revenue of $19.367 billion (as of November 3, 2024) is indeed intimidating. This also indicates, from another perspective, that as the largest ecosystem in the crypto world, Ethereum is far from the 'dead end' situation often mentioned by many.
Some representative ecosystems
Infrastructure projects: stablecoins and DEXs become 'money-sucking experts'.
Another category of projects ranking high in the 'money-sucking leaderboard' includes many infrastructure projects such as stablecoins, staking protocols, and DEXs, among which—
The issuers behind USDT, Tether, and USDC, Circle, respectively rank high with nearly $16.17 billion and $516 million in protocol revenue over the past year;
DEXs such as Uniswap, Raydium, PancakeSwap rank in the second tier of such projects, with protocol revenues ranging from $350 million to $820 million over the year;
In addition, Lido, Ethena, and other Ethereum ecosystem staking and re-staking protocols also ranked with $986 million and $136 million in protocol revenue over the past year, becoming part of the 'new infrastructure' and receiving high market recognition.
Some representative projects
Application projects: wallets and Meme coin platforms are 'money-sucking machines'.
As for specific application projects, the previous 'industry hot spots'—wallet applications and the theme track of this cycle, 'Meme coin platforms', have become the most significant 'money-sucking machines'. Among them—
pump.fun (noted as Pump on the platform) ranks 16th with nearly $146 million in protocol revenue over the past year;
pump.fun ranks 16th
MetaMask (commonly known as the little fox wallet) ranks 28th with nearly $70.49 million in protocol revenue over the past year.
MetaMask ranks 28th.
Expansion projects: L2 and service platforms are 'money-sucking newcomers'.
In addition to the main categories above, there are many 'expansion projects' ranking high in protocol revenue over the past year—such as Ethereum L2 networks including Base, Arbitrum, ZKsync Era, Optimism, among others—
Base ranks 26th with nearly $73.02 million in protocol revenue over the past year;
Arbitrum ranks 32nd with nearly $56.19 million in protocol revenue over the past year;
ZKsync Era ranks 38th with nearly $36.74 million in protocol revenue over the past year;
Optimism ranks 41st with nearly $33.96 million in protocol revenue over the past year.
Some representative ecosystems
Service platforms are more diverse, including the former 'NFT market king' OpenSea, aggregation trading platforms like DEX Screener, and numerous Telegram ecosystem trading bots like Photon, BONKbot, Trojan, Banana Gun, Maestro, etc. From the image below, we can also see that the Solana ecosystem remains the main focus of these projects.
Some representative projects
Top 10 'strongest money-sucking' protocols overview, highlighting the most 'profitable' tracks in crypto.
Based on the above information and DefiLlama website data, we can filter out the following representative 'money-sucking projects' according to the total protocol revenue data—
Ethereum, with a total protocol revenue of $19.369 billion;
Uniswap, with a total protocol revenue of $5.697 billion;
BTC, with a total protocol revenue of $4.144 billion;
BSC (BNB Chain), with a total protocol revenue of $2.857 billion;
OpenSea, with a total protocol revenue of $2.783 billion;
Lido, with a total protocol revenue of $1.939 billion;
Tether, with a total protocol revenue of $1.684 billion;
PancakeSwap, with a total protocol revenue of $1.614 billion;
TRON, with a total protocol revenue of $1.17 billion;
AAVE, with a total protocol revenue of $961 million.
Project ranking summary
Summary: Compared to the 'version answer', a steady flow is the way to go.
To be fair, from my personal perspective, the back-and-forth of 'money-sucking protocols' also reflects the changes in the crypto industry:
Before 2020, the most money-sucking protocols were undoubtedly various public chains that started with ICOs, with Ethereum also emerging from that time, laying the foundation for today's $300 billion market cap;
From 2020 to 2022, the Ethereum ecosystem became the 'center of the cryptocurrency industry'. Driven by waves of industry trends such as DeFi Summer, GameFi Summer, and NFT Summer, platforms and projects corresponding to Uniswap, Axie Infinity, STEPN, OpenSea, etc. emerged one after another, raising the banner of industry money-sucking;
In the phase of 2023-2024, this round of the cycle first saw the emergence of the 'SocialFi Golden Product' benchmarked by friend.tech, followed by the 'MemeFi MVP' represented by pump.fun. The 'money-sucking black hole' of the crypto industry has become an 'asset issuance platform' that simultaneously masters liquidity and attention.
However, looking closely at the protocol revenue rankings over the past year and even longer time frames, the version answer is at best a newcomer in the 'money-sucking track'. Whether they can pass through the mid-stage of the product lifecycle and ensure they remain 'in the game' in later stages is still an unknown.
Compared to countless 'one-wave' protocols and applications, perhaps a steady flow ecosystem remains the best 'money-sucking tool'.
