The five largest DeFi protocols generated $158 million in revenue in December 2024, and four of them saw record monthly revenue levels, according to Token Terminal.
Ethena synthetic dollar issuer led in turnover in December, recording $56.9 million in monthly revenue, a new all-time high. Moreover, this amount represented almost 25% of its total revenue of $230.8 million generated last year.
Sky (former Maker) also recorded a new record strong monthly revenue, generating nearly $40 million last month and accounting for 13% of the $304 million it captured in 2024. The new revenue record is within $1 million of the previous, recorded in January 2022.
Aerodrome, the base’s largest DEX, generated about $38 million in revenue in December. This is a new all-time high, more than $5 million more than the previous one and equivalent to 15.6% of the protocol’s $243.6 million revenue in 2024.
Revenue at money market leader Aave jumped by more than $3 million between November and December last year, to $13.6 million. This new record monthly revenue amounted to 16.7% of the previous year’s total revenue of $81.4 million.
Lido, the only DeFi app in the group without a new monthly revenue record, received $9.6 million in revenue from user interactions. The amount was equivalent to 9.3% of the $103.6 million in revenue received by the liquid staking protocol in 2024.
Capturing true value
A commonly applied on-chain metric to measure actual DeFi protocol usage is fees spent in interactions. In addition to the increase in revenue, all five of the aforementioned DeFi apps saw fee growth, indicating real usage.
According to its model, Ethena’s revenue equals its fees, which were $56.9 million last month. The same logic applies to Sky, which charges nearly $40 million in fees.
Royalties from the airfield slightly exceeded its revenues, totaling $38.3 million. Meanwhile, Aave reached a new all-time high of $89.8 million.
Despite recording the smallest amount of revenue of the group, Lido finished 2024 with $96.7 million in fees spent, its third-largest monthly fee amount.
