Monthly DeFi protocol fees dropped 24% in August
In August, the monthly fees earned by decentralized finance protocols dropped 24.4% from July, recording the lowest point since February.
According to The Block's data dashboard , August’s fees were significantly lower than July’s $381.45 million and even further away from March’s $494.14 million . Still, last month’s protocol fees remained above February’s $265.18 million. The amount of fees is often used to gauge the popularity and usage of a DeFi protocol.
During the month, DeFi protocols, excluding base layers, accumulated fees of $288.38 million. Lido’s $76.18 million led the fees, followed by Uniswap, Jito, and PancakeSwap.
“Users have found declining sustainable yield on DeFi protocols as the APR from liquid restaking tokens (LRT) strategies have faded in recent months, and more traders have turned toward memecoins,” said independent market researcher Nick Ruck. “DeFi protocols have yet to push any momentous innovations recently, as Uniswap prepares to release V4 while other protocols such as Euler, Bunni, and more also continue to develop new versions of their platforms.”
The total DeFi revenue in August also fell, dropping 19.7% to $59.53 million from July’s $74.15 million. August’s monthly DeFi revenue also recorded the lowest point since February.
Bitcoin mining revenues slipped
Meanwhile, last month also saw another monthly decline in bitcoin miner revenue, recording $851.36 million in total revenue and $20.76 million in pure transaction fees. This is around 10.5% down from July’s $951.11 million. Miner revenues saw a record high of over $2 billion in March.
The miner revenue decline in August came amidst a period of significant volatility for Bitcoin, caused by multiple factors such as uncertainties in the upcoming U.S. election, outflows from spot crypto exchange-traded funds , and a lack of upward catalysts from the crypto sector. Last month, JPMorgan downgraded price targets for bitcoin miners to reflect a price drop and an increase in the baseline network hashrate.
