Key Takeaways
Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin issuer with a market cap of $137 billion, has also become a dominant force in the on-chain market, grabbing 33% of the total revenue in December last year.
Tether is one of the most profitable crypto firms, in 2024, with most of its profit coming from centralized exchange stablecoin demands. It has gradually built a strong presence in the decentralized market.
According to data from DeFiLlama, two dominant stablecoin issuers, Tether and Circle, accounted for 40% of all on-chain revenue last month.
Tether alone generated $532 million of the over $1.5 billion in revenue from all on-chain protocols, including blockchain and DeFi platforms, while Circle bagged $132 million in revenue.
Stablecoins play a crucial role in the decentralized world, offering liquidity and movement of funds across the chain; the likes of Tether and Circle have managed to trump the on-chain world in the past year.
Tether amassed $5.6 billion in total on-chain revenue, in 2024, while Uniswap, the most prominent decentralized exchange platform, generated $923.4 million during the same period.
Despite its dominance taking a dip toward the end of 2024, Tether’s December revenue indicates its cumulative fees touched $10 billion, making it one of the most profitable private firms in the world. Tether has been using its profits to diversify its operations.
Apart from stablecoin’s dominance in on-chain revenue, Ethereum (ETH) held the second-largest share, in the last month and year.
Ethereum’s on-chain revenue for December was $198 million, while Solana’s on-chain revenue was $115.6 million. Ethereum saw $2.2 billion in revenue in 2025, while Solana saw just $721.47 million.
The difference in Solana’s and Ethereum’s revenue share highlights the vastness of the two ecosystems. Solana is often projected as an Ethereum killer, taunted to overtake Ethereum as the decentralized computational platform in the crypto ecosystem.
However, Ethereum, despite a lackluster bull run so far, continues to dominate the decentralized ecosystem in terms of revenue and fees collected over the past year.