Fees are what users pay to use a protocol — swapping on an exchange, borrowing an asset, or settling a trade. Revenue is the share of those fees that actually accrues to the protocol, its treasury or its token holders. The two are often confused, but the distinction is central to evaluating any crypto protocol.
Fee data captures the total value paid by users over a period — typically 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days — across a protocol's products. On a DEX, fees come from swap commissions and, on perpetual venues, trading charges. On lending protocols, fees are taken as the spread between supply and borrow rates or as protocol-side cuts. Revenue is the portion of fees distributed to the treasury, token holders or stakers after liquidity providers and integrators take their share. CoinDuck reports both, split by chain, category and protocol.
Fees measure real usage: a protocol can post high volume through incentive programs, but fees prove users are willing to pay for the service. Revenue shows whether that usage translates into value capture for the protocol itself. Analysts compare fee-to-volume ratios to gauge pricing power, and fee trends to detect shifts in market share before they show up in TVL. Because fee structures differ — some protocols pass 100% of fees to liquidity providers, others route a large share to buybacks or stakers — comparing revenue rather than raw fees gives a cleaner picture of sustainability.
CoinDuck aggregates fee and revenue data from on-chain events across hundreds of protocols and multiple ecosystems. Swap events, borrowing interest accruals and other fee-generating activity are parsed directly from chain data, normalized to USD, and aggregated per protocol and chain. The fees and revenue dashboard includes a total overview, an explorer table with sortable 24h, 7d and 30d columns, chain-level breakdowns, and comparison views so you can benchmark protocols against each other.
Explore fees and revenue across protocols