On-chain activity often translates into increased fee generation for DeFi and DEX protocols. Projects like PancakeSwap share these revenues with holders, with some of those tokens offering daily rewards.
On-chain economic activity translates into significant daily earnings for several chains and decentralized protocols. In 2025, staking coins are back again, this time with a share of real on-chain economic value.
Several of the leading chains and DeFi protocols offer some variation of revenue-sharing, leading to a new incentive for holding tokens. The staking is not just for network security; it becomes a guarantee for the growth of the ecosystem. Those types of tokens also show growth patterns that are often immune to the short-term volatility of the market.
Most of the leading chains carry a handful of revenue-producing apps, though the biggest volumes originate with Ethereum, Solana, BNB Smart Chain, and TRON.
PancakeSwap’s CAKE leads in daily revenues
The PancakeSwap DEX is leading in terms of passive income for CAKE holders. In the past couple of months, PancakeSwap was widely used to carry out token trades through Binance Wallet. This rapidly increased the daily fees on PancakeSwap.
PancakeSwap has the biggest revenues per holder for CAKE, as the DEX fees returned to levels not seen since the 2021 bull market. | Source: DeFi Llama
CAKE currently distributes $2.72M in daily revenues, ahead of all other protocols and chains. The token additionally benefits from burns and the new tokenomics for revenue-sharing.
The revenue-sharing for PancakeSwap returned to levels not seen since the 2021-2022 bull market.
For more than two years, the DEX was largely forgotten before regaining its status in early 2025. The current expansion follows growing interest in the BNB Smart Chain ecosystem, incentives and the mining of Alpha Points for Binance’s special token sales and airdrops.
Revenue-sharing drives value to altcoins and tokens
PancakeSwap showed that the best fuel for generating and sharing revenue is the availability of real activity.
The potential for passive income is also driving the growth of HYPE, encouraging staking instead of selling. HYPE holders also gain access to over $2.4M in fees on some of the more active days. HYPE’s revenue-sharing since the start is what helped early holders to retain their stake and avoid a slide in the market price.
Of the top 5 revenue-sharing protocols, three are DEXs, producing revenues in direct proportion to real demand and on-chain activity. DEXs have even surpassed lending protocols and liquid staking venues, as well as chains like Solana.
As a result, CAKE traded near a three-month high range at $2.48. CAKE expects a bigger breakout if the DEX retains its activity levels.
The potential for staking rewards also put TRX on an expansion trend. TRX traded near a three-month high at $0.28, avoiding the volatility of other altcoins.
HYPE also expanded to $40.96, breaking into a new price discovery range.
Aerodrome, another perpetual DEX, also saw a strong recovery since April, with its token rising to $0.54 in the past week. Aerodrome offers around $411K in daily revenues, shared with governance token holders.
Revenue-sharing raised the expectations of an upcoming PancakeSwap token. Currently, the DEX shares some of its revenues even without a token. Some DEXs, like Uniswap, only share their revenues with governance token holders, while simple UNI holders do not receive a share of daily DEX fees.
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