Top 5 Revenue Generating Tokens

Even though this should’ve always been the case, the crypto market is finally accepting that revenue-generating businesses make the best investments. Crazy right? It’s almost like that’s been the standard in TradFi markets for over 100 years. Only took us 17.

But, revenue-generating businesses are not enough in crypto. We also need tokenholder value accrual. Because unlike TradFi, tokenholders are not guaranteed any rights or protections. We don’t have a legal structure that guarantees tokenholders business revenue or a stake in the company during an acquisition. And not only that, many times crypto protocols have both equity and a token, further pushing tokenholders into the junior tranche.

So, when I am looking for potential investment opportunities, I want not only a revenue-generating business, but also one where tokenholders have rights and structural value accrual.

To make my search easier, over the past 6 months, I have been developing a tokenholder-specific framework for evaluating value accrual in crypto assets. On top of that, using the Blockworks MCP, I built an interactive dashboard for scoring tokens based on my framework. This framework + whitepaper + dashboard will all go live in the next week or two, so stay tuned. But in the meantime, here are the top 5 tokens based on my framework that generate revenue and have strong holder economics (oh yeah, and as always…not investment advice).

Quick note: These are revenue-generating tokens with holder value accrual. That doesn’t necessarily mean their valuation is cheap right now or they make good investments.

1. HYPE (of course)

Revenue: $773M annualized (last 30 days, as of Oct 28) on $979M of fees. So ~79% of fees is revenue.

Holder Economics: All of that revenue, including ~$140M a year from a yield program on Hyperliquid’s stablecoin reserves (AQAv2), goes to the Assistance Fund, which buys HYPE and sends it to an address with no keys (basically burned). So holders don’t get paid in cash. Instead, every HYPE they hold becomes a bigger share of the supply, with no staking needed.

The buyback is hard-coded into Hyperliquid’s chain (only a validator vote or upgrade could change it). The number I care most about is one I built for my framework: dilution-adjusted accrual yield (DAAY), a crypto version of the net payout yield equity investors use. It’s what holders get paid each year as a % of the token’s value, minus how fast new supply dilutes them. HYPE’s is 0.29% (2.07% accrual yield, minus 1.78% in staking rewards), because new HYPE paid out to stakers offsets most of the buyback.

2. SKY

Revenue: $162M annualized (last 30 days, as of Oct 28) on $346M of fees. Sky reports a ~$429M gross revenue run rate, but most of it goes to USDS savers first.

Holder Economics: Sky’s profit (~$130M a year) is what’s left after paying USDS savers, Prime Agents, and opex. Half of that profit goes into reserves until they hit $150M. The other half, ~$61M a year based on September’s payout, goes to holders. Sky uses part of it to buy SKY on the market and give those tokens to stakers as rewards, and pays the rest to stakers in USDS.

Only a small slice of the bought SKY is burned, so to actually get paid, you have to stake. That’s ~14% of gross revenue, for a DAAY of 3.8% (3.98% accrual yield, minus 0.18% net issuance). Holder accrual depends on governance, which sets the split, can change it anytime, and has already cut holder payouts once to build reserves.

3. CAKE

Revenue: $48M annualized (last 30 days, as of Oct 28) on $145M of fees.

Holder Economics: Every week, ~22% of fees (~$32M a year) gets swapped into CAKE and burned. No staking or locking needed. Every holder benefits, because each CAKE becomes a bigger share of a shrinking supply (37 straight months of net deflation, and -0.70% in September alone). DAAY is 2.2% (4.8% accrual yield, minus 2.55% in new CAKE minted as rewards for liquidity providers), and that’s a little conservative, since the team’s own burn reports run higher.

The economics are strong because the fee split is written into the pool contracts. But the weak spot is that the team still runs the weekly burn itself, so it relies on them doing it. Also, The Flip (passed Oct 24) cuts the protocol’s share of fees from its newer pools (v3 and Infinity) from about a third to 12% and roughly halves emissions. So, that means less burn, but also less dilution.

4. AERO

Revenue: $92M annualized (last 30 days, Aerodrome and Velodrome combined, as of Oct 28) on $134M of fees.

Holder Economics: AERO pays holders the most directly. To get 100% of pools’ revenue (~69% of all fees, paid in fees rather than through a burn), holders must lock their AERO and point their emissions at pools. The payout is hard-coded, but it only reaches lockers, and emissions dilute everyone. That comes out to a 6.2% accrual yield, but emissions ran 12.4% over the last year, so DAAY is -6.2%. 

The Oct 22 merger made emissions adaptive (capped at ~1.2x a pool’s revenue) and ended both the rebase (new AERO minted to lockers to offset dilution) and bribes (payments to lockers for steering emissions to a pool). At 8% emissions, DAAY would be -1.8%, so emissions need to get below ~6% to go positive.

5. UNI

Revenue: $87M annualized to holders (last 30 days, as of Oct 28) on $1.04B of fees. So holders only receive ~8% of Uniswap’s fees.

Holder Economics: The fee switch is live on v2, v3, and v4 across seven chains, and all of it buys and burns UNI. Like HYPE and CAKE, holders don’t get cash; each UNI just becomes a bigger share of the supply, with no staking needed. That’s a 1.9% accrual yield. 

But Uniswap Labs’ 20M UNI-per-year growth budget from the treasury adds 3.2% in new supply, so DAAY is -1.3%. Expanding the fee to more pools and chains still needs governance votes, and holders also vote on the fee size. So with each vote, governance can grow holder payouts or cut them.

So yeah, revenue is important. But who actually receives the revenue matters more. It took crypto 17 years to figure out the first part. Hopefully it doesn’t take another 17 for the second part.

 — Jake

ICE, the owner of the NYSE, is investing in trade.xyz and plans a U.S.-regulated, 24/7 perps market built on Hyperliquid, pending CFTC approval. HYPE ripped 22% in the seven hours after the news.

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