DeFi Protocol Fees Drop 24% Month-on-Month, Hit Lowest Year-to-Date

Fees and revenue from DeFi protocols both fell sharply in August. Lido led the way with $76.18 million in fees, followed by Uniswap, Jito, and PancakeSwap.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol fees fell 24.4% in August from July, hitting their lowest level since February 2024.

According to data from The Block, total fees for the month were just $288.38 million, significantly lower than July's $381.45 million and far below March's peak of $494.14 million. However, this figure is still slightly higher than February's $265.18 million. Lido continues to lead the way in fees collected with $76.18 million, followed by Uniswap, Jito, and PancakeSwap.

Nick Ruck, an independent market researcher, commented:

"Users are gradually realizing that sustainable interest rates from DeFi protocols are falling sharply, as the annualized rate of return (APR) from liquid restaking token (LRT) strategies has dropped in recent times. This has caused many traders to switch to favoring memecoins. Overall, DeFi protocols have not had any significant innovations recently, although Uniswap is preparing to launch V4 and other protocols such as Euler and Bunni are only developing new versions."

DeFi's total revenue in August also fluctuated sharply, down 19.7% to $59.53 million compared to $74.15 million in July, reaching its lowest level since February.

Since mid-August, DeFi Dominance has also started to "fall", forming a bottom of the past 3 years, as Coin68 reported.

Bitcoin miner revenue also fell sharply in the month, recording a total of $851.36 million, and $20.76 million in transaction fees. This is a decrease of about 10.5% compared to $951.11 million in July. Notably, Bitcoin mining revenue had reached a record of more than $2 billion in March.

This decline occurred in the context of Bitcoin experiencing many fluctuations due to factors such as uncertainty from the upcoming US election, capital outflows from spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and lack of bullish momentum from the cryptocurrency market. Last month, JPMorgan also lowered its price target for Bitcoin mining companies to reflect the harshness of the market and the underlying hashrate of the network.

Regarding the DeFi sector, the father of Ethereum recently faced a wave of criticism for his "dislike of DeFi" stance. On the other hand, the Trump family is nurturing a DeFi-related project called "The DeFiant Ones".