Crypto Revenue Data Reveals a $5B Gap Between Top Protocol and #10 — Is Crypto’s Future Centralized?
Key Takeaways
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Centralized and semi-centralized protocols capture over 64% of top-10 revenue, outpacing their decentralized counterparts.
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Tether leads with $5.2 billion in revenue in one year, far ahead of others due to centralized reserve interest earnings.
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A $5 billion gap between #1 and #10 highlights extreme concentration, challenging crypto’s decentralization narrative.
Crypto was built on the promise of decentralization. In practice, however, much of the industry’s power and profits remain tightly concentrated.
That contradiction is clearest in the revenue rankings, where the top spots are dominated not by decentralized protocols but by centralized stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle.
Based…
