DeFi Market Experiences Revenue Drops as On-chain Activity Reduces

• The broader DeFi sector is witnessing revenue decline where most of the platforms faced declines of over 50% in March.
• MakerDAO was the only good performer in March with an 11% revenue surge.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector witnessed a massive revenue downturn in March 2025. Most of the major protocols across multiple blockchains reported over 50% decline in their revenues.

Defi protocols generate their revenue from transaction fees, lending fees, and other service charges. The drop in revenues indicated a decline in on-chain activity, reduced trading volumes, and a decrease in user activity on DeFi platforms.

Weak Revenues Hinting at Market Headwinds

A 50% revenue loss might reflect a potential market sentiment shift, which could lead to negative market sentiment and further outflows of capital from the ecosystem.

In March, Solana-based protocols such as Pump.fun, Jito, and Raydium generated approximately $42 million in revenue. The data revealed that March revenue was a 55% drop from February and a 75% decrease from Januarys peak.

Meanwhile, BNB Chains Pancakeswap generated a revenue of $21 million which marked a decrease of 54% in revenue on a month-over-month basis. The trend was similarly concerning on the Ethereum-based protocols. The platforms such as Ethena, Lido, Aave, Curve, Compound and Sushi collectively generated just $24.5 million of revenue in March. Ethereum-based protocols witnessed a 52% and 65% drop in revenues compared to February and January 2025.

MakerDAO (recently rebranded as Sky) emerged as the only solo performer who witnessed a month-over-month increase in revenues. It generated over $10 million in revenue in March, which is an 11% increase compared to February.

The broader implications of this revenue collapse are already visible in DeFi token performance. The GMCI‘s GMDEFI index, which tracks tokens from various DeFi projects across multiple chains, is down 40% year-to-date. This significant underperformance highlights growing investor concerns about the sector’s immediate growth prospects as on-chain activity continues to decline.