What happened? Crypto apps are now earning more than the blockchains that power them.
Apps like PumpFun and Hyperliquid scaled incredibly fast and pulled in hundreds of millions in fees—PumpFun made $724M and Hyperliquid $667M in the past year. Stablecoin issuers are also massively profitable, with Tether projected to earn around $15B in profit this year. Overall, revenue is flowing to consumer-facing apps and issuers instead of the underlying L1s that host them.
Who does this affect? Traders, builders, token holders, and stablecoin issuers are all in the mix.
Traders and users benefit from better products and discovery, while app founders and investors capture most of the upside. Layer-1 blockchains and protocol token holders risk seeing less value accrue to their tokens if apps keep siphoning revenue. Regulators and traditional finance players also start to pay attention as these apps and issuers become major profit centers.
Why does this matter? It changes where value is captured in crypto and shifts market incentives.
If revenue keeps concentrating in apps and stablecoin issuers, L1 token premiums could erode unless chains find ways to internalize value through fees or revenue-sharing. That shift may redraw capital flows, favoring consumer-facing and attention-monetizing products over base-layer token bets. For investors and builders, the takeaway is clear: the next wave of winners may be apps and infrastructure that actually capture and monetize user activity, not just the chains underneath them.