The top five DeFi protocols generated $158 million in revenue as of December 2024, with four registering record highs for monthly revenue streams, according to Token Terminal.
Ethena, the issuer of synthetic dollars led in turnover in December, with monthly revenue of $56.9 million, a new all-time record. Furthermore, the amount represented almost 25% of last year’s total revenue of $230.8 million.
Sky (former Maker) too recorded a new all-time high in monthly revenue, it generated nearly $40 million last month and represented 13% of the $304 million it took in in 2024. The new sales record is less than $1 million away from the previous one, recorded in January 2022.
Aerodrome, the largest DEX on the base, approximately $38 million secured in terms of turnover in December. This was a new all-time high, more than $5 million higher than the previous one and equal to 15.6% of the protocol’s $243.6 million in 2024 revenue.
Turnover of leading money market Aave increased by more than $3 million between November and December last year, to $13.6 million. This new record in monthly revenue was equal to 16.7% of the previous year’s total revenue of $81.4 million.
Lido, the only DeFi application of the bunch without a new record in monthly revenue, received $9.6 million in revenue through user interactions. The amount was equal to 9.3% of the $103.6 million in revenue the liquid staking protocol received in 2024.
Capturing real value
An on-chain metric often applied to measure the actual usage of the DeFi protocol is the fees spent on interactions. In addition to the revenue jump, all five DeFi applications mentioned above recorded growth in fees, indicating real usage.
According to the model, Ethena’s revenues equal its fees, which were $56.9 million last month. The same logic applies to Sky, which has almost $40 million in fees.
The airport’s fees exceeded revenues by a narrow margin, totaling $38.3 million. Meanwhile, Aave hit a new all-time high of $89.8 million.
Although it recorded the smallest amount of revenue of the group, Lido ended 2024 with $96.7 million in fees spent, the third largest monthly fee amount.
