Exchange-Owned OP Stack Chains Made Nearly $500M in Onchain Revenue, OP Labs Says
OP Labs said exchange-owned chains built on the OP Stack generated more than $495 million in application revenue in the second half of 2025. The figure includes sequencer fees from transactions, revenue generated through applications embedded directly into exchange platforms, and assets that remained onchain.
According to the official press release shared with CryptoPotato, OP Labs said exchanges historically relied on third-party networks that captured much of the value generated from settlement activity, application fees, and broader onchain monetization linked to user activity.
OP Stack Onchain Revenue
Over the past year, however, applications running across exchange-owned chains built on the OP Stack have expanded rapidly. OP Labs highlighted that Morpho’s total value locked (TVL) on Coinbase-backed Base rose from $48 million at the beginning of 2025 to more than $960 million by the end of the year, representing nearly 20x growth. The company said the increase was driven mainly by lending products integrated directly into the Coinbase app rather than through wallet-based user acquisition.
Base has now become Morpho’s second-largest chain globally and accounted for 32% of Morpho’s application fees in H2 2025, which OP Labs said was 13 times that of Arbitrum and 60 times that of OP Mainnet.
Meanwhile, Kraken’s Ink chain added more than one million unique addresses since December 2024. OP Labs said fewer than 0.6% of those addresses had any prior onchain history with Kraken, while the remaining 99.4% represented net-new onchain wallets, which it described as evidence that exchange-owned chains are expanding the overall onchain market rather than merely shifting existing users between networks.
OP Labs further noted that Tydro, the Aave V3 white-label lending protocol launched on Ink in October 2025, reached $100 million in TVL within its first 24 hours and surpassed $500 million within 90 days. The company said comparable Aave deployments on neutral Layer 2 networks previously took between 142 and 721 days to reach similar milestones.
Optimism Foundation’s Chief Business Officer Kyle Jenke said the H2 figures showed a shift from the old system, where exchanges made money from trading while external networks captured the value generated thereafter. He added
“Exchanges now own the settlement, distribution, and application layers their users transact on. They’re doing it on a shared standard precisely so they don’t fragment from each other in the process.”
Ecosystem Record High
Across the wider ecosystem, OP Stack chains secured $16.33 billion in total value, held $6.8 billion in DeFi TVL, and processed 3.6 billion transactions during H2 2025. This was an all-time high across more than 50 live chains covering exchanges, consumer applications, financial infrastructure, and developer platforms.
Additionally, regulated companies are also choosing the OP Stack for institutional blockchain projects. Bitpanda’s Vision Chain uses the OP Stack for institutional finance aligned with Europe’s MiCA and MiFID II regulations, while Japan’s Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities launched the regulated precious-metals-backed Zipangcoin on OP Mainnet.
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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