DeFi Revenue Report: Tether And Circle Take 60% Of The Week

Tether and Circle together took close to 60% of the revenue DefiLlama tracked in the week to 5 October 2026. The figure comes from DefiLlama's revenue rankings, read on 6 October. Take those two out and the rest of DeFi revenue is a lot thinner than the headline total suggests.

Two issuers, one big slice

Tether booked roughly $121.5M and Circle about $49.4M, per the DefiLlama fees API. That lands near $170.9M out of $286.4M. Neither is DeFi revenue in the usual sense. DefiLlama counts the yield earned on the Treasury bills and other assets sitting behind USDT and USDC. Our earlier look at stablecoin supply on the XRP Ledger covers how that supply moves between chains.

Both barely moved on the week before. Tether slipped about half a percent and Circle gave up about 2%. Over 30 days both grew, which would fit bigger reserves, though the feed never says why.

Rows like these are on DefiLlama's revenue table for anyone who wants to check.

Daily numbers show the contrast. Tether's line stayed between about $17.2M and $17.7M all week, which fits income driven by reserves. Hyperliquid's swung from roughly $1.2M on 3 October to $3.2M the day before.

DeFi revenue once the issuers step aside

Everyone else shared about $115.5M. Hyperliquid's perpetuals product led that group at $14.3M, down 14% on the previous week. Its 30-day number is still up about 7%, so one soft week proves little. Across the whole market, 30-day revenue rose roughly 11% while the latest week came in a touch under the one before.

pump.fun went the other way and gained 19% to reach $11.9M. DefiLlama's broader Pump row adds other Pump products, so it shows more. Collector Crypt, a trading-card pack seller, jumped 41% to $4.4M and sits among the dozen biggest earners.

Look at the grey bar in the chart above, which I drew from the same API pull. It holds every protocol below the top five, and it is still smaller than Tether's bar alone.

Fees and revenue are different lines

DefiLlama tracked about $548.6M of fees over the same days, so revenue was roughly half of that. The gap is where definitions bite for anyone comparing DeFi revenue. Uniswap V4 collected $20.7M in swap fees yet shows no revenue at all. DefiLlama says its fee switch is tracked under the V3 adapter, which reports $1.9M.

Chains split the same way. Solana users paid $7.3M in fees, but only $0.8M counts as revenue. Tron users paid $5.7M and DefiLlama treats all of it as revenue, since the TRX is burned. By revenue, Tron is ahead of Solana, Ethereum, Base and BSC added together. Judged by fees, Solana's $7.3M tops Tron's $5.7M.

Limits of this reading

DefiLlama builds each adapter separately, so one protocol's revenue is not always like another's. Hyperliquid's figure is mostly fees routed to HYPE buybacks, and Tether's is reserve income rather than anything users paid. For pump.fun, DefiLlama counts only the platform's own slice of each trade fee and leaves out what goes to coin creators. The windows roll, and the newest complete UTC day is 5 October. Read every ranking with those definitions beside it.

Nothing here measures profit. Tether and Circle carry costs and partner payouts that sit outside this feed. So the table tells you who collects, and says nothing about who keeps.

Stretch the view to 30 days and five names still hold about 68% of it. Total DeFi revenue leans on very few lines. Token prices sit outside this data entirely. Readers weighing any of these assets should treat the numbers as context, not as a signal to buy.