Onchain revenue nears $20B in 2025, marking a maturity test for crypto: Research

The blockchain industry is showing signs of newfound maturity — at least by one often-overlooked metric — pointing to broader adoption across decentralized finance, consumer apps and emerging sectors.

According to a new Onchain Revenue Report from venture capital company 1kx, onchain revenue, as measured by user-paid fees, is on track to reach $19.8 billion in 2025. That follows a record-breaking $9.7 billion in the first half of the year alone.

These fees represent the total amount users spend to transact directly on blockchain and related infrastructure, covering trades, swaps, registrations, gaming revenues and subscriptions, among others.

While 2025 isn’t expected to surpass the all-time high of $24.1 billion set in 2021, total onchain fees have grown more than tenfold since 2020, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of roughly 60%.

“We view fees paid as the best indicator, reflecting repeatable utility that users and firms are willing to pay for,” wrote report authors Lasse Clausen, Christopher Heymann, Robert Koschig, Clare He and Johannes Säuberlich.

“As protocols mature and regulation improves, the ability to generate and distribute consistent fee revenue will separate durable networks from early-stage experiments,” they wrote.

Beyond serving as a signal of financial health, rising onchain fees offer insight into the broader adoption of blockchain technology, especially in emerging themes such as real-world asset tokenization, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) and wallet-based consumer apps.

The 1kx report argues that this growth underscores a structural shift: Cryptocurrencies are evolving from speculative instruments into a legitimate, revenue-generating asset class with tangible network effects.

Related: Bitcoin faces a fee crisis that threatens network security: Can BTCfi help?

Tokenized assets are gaining momentum

The report highlighted the rapid rise of tokenized RWAs, whose onchain value excluding stablecoins surged to more than $28 billion by the third quarter of 2025. That figure has since climbed past $35 billion, according to data from RWA.xyz.

According to 1kx, the total value of tokenized assets onchain has more than doubled over the past year, with fees generated by those assets growing even faster — a sign of increasing user activity and market adoption.

Major Wall Street institutions, including JPMorgan, BlackRock and BNY Mellon, are making significant investments in asset tokenization. As Cointelegraph reported, JPMorgan has tokenized one of its private equity funds on its private Kinexys blockchain, while BNY Mellon has partnered with RWA platform Securitize to bring collateralized loan obligations onchain.

Related: Tokenization platform tZero eyes 2026 IPO amid surge in crypto listings