Onchain fees: crypto protocols collect $4 billion in third quarter

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Under the label “onchain fees”, everything a user pays to use a blockchain or a decentralized application. For example, the gas of sending a transaction, the commission charged on a swap or the trading fees of a perpetual platform.

These amounts correspond to real payments, verifiable block by block, and not to speculative income or in-house cash. Circle and Tether's earnings on their reserves remain out of the count.

The 1kx fund compiled these payments across more than 2,600 protocols tracked, via open data from DefiLlama and block explorers like Etherscan, with a snapshot ending September 30 that covers a full quarter without extrapolation.

The progression contrasts with spring and summer, the two dreariest quarters since the end of 2020. The rebound places collections at their best level for 2026, driven by record monthly fees in September.

A major downside: the total remains far from the record at the end of 2021, when speculation boosted each network. It is difficult at the moment to know which of the two regimes serves as the basis for the valuation of the sector.

The list of billers gives the measure, with Uniswap at the top of the DeFi ranking ahead of Pump.fun and Polymarket. These platforms charge a commission on each trade, each bet or each open position, and their collections fuel most of the quarterly rebound.

The growth bears a signature known to the sector, with decentralized finance applications accounting for 62% of the quarter's fees, far ahead of blockchains themselves. A swap on a decentralized exchange reports to the protocol, not the network that hosts it.

This turnover does not benefit the same pockets, because the value redistributed to token holders fell to $1.5 billion, down 6% over the period. Full crates on one side, porters' tap on the other.

The imbalance questions valuation. The dashboard relates each capitalization to its annualized costs (P/F ratio), sector by sector. The higher this multiple, the more future growth the market requires to justify the price of the token.

For comparison, 2026 crypto revenues already placed Hyperliquid in the lead with 429 million over a rolling quarter.

Holders have not said their last word, because these flows attract buyers listed on the stock exchange. Strive has raised $630 million to bolster its bitcoin hoard. Grayscale has been accepting your cryptos for ETF shares since October 22.

Machine-translated from French