OP Labs announced that exchange-owned chains built on the OP Stack generated over $495 million in application revenue during the second half of 2025. This figure encompasses sequencer fees from transactions, revenue from applications integrated directly into exchange platforms, and onchain assets.
Shifting Value Dynamics
According to an official press release shared with CryptoPotato, OP Labs noted that exchanges historically depended on third-party networks, which captured a significant portion of the value generated from settlement activity, application fees, and broader onchain monetization linked to user activity.
However, in the past year, applications running on exchange-owned chains built on the OP Stack have seen rapid expansion. OP Labs highlighted that Morpho’s total value locked (TVL) on Coinbase-backed Base increased from $48 million at the beginning of 2025 to over $960 million by the end of the year, representing nearly 20x growth. The company attributed this growth primarily to 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 stated was 13 times that of Arbitrum and 60 times that of OP Mainnet.
Expanding Onchain Market
Meanwhile, Kraken’s Ink chain added over one million unique addresses since December 2024. OP Labs reported that less than 0.6% of those addresses had any prior onchain history with Kraken, while the remaining 99.4% represented net-new onchain wallets. This was presented as evidence that exchange-owned chains are expanding the overall onchain market rather than simply 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 stated that comparable Aave deployments on neutral Layer 2 networks previously took between 142 and 721 days to reach similar milestones.
Ecosystem Growth
Optimism Foundation’s Chief Business Officer Kyle Jenke stated that the H2 figures demonstrated a shift from the previous system, where exchanges profited from trading while external networks captured subsequent value. 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.”
Across the broader 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 represented an all-time high across more than 50 live chains, encompassing exchanges, consumer applications, financial infrastructure, and developer platforms.
Additionally, regulated companies are also adopting the OP Stack for institutional blockchain projects. Bitpanda’s Vision Chain utilizes 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.
Leave a Reply