OP Labs reported that exchange-owned chains built with the OP Stack generated more than $495 million in application revenue during the second half of 2025. This total includes sequencer fees from transactions, revenue from applications embedded directly into exchange platforms, and assets that remained onchain.
In an official press release shared with CryptoPotato, OP Labs explained that exchanges historically depended on third-party networks that captured much of the value produced by settlement activity, application fees, and other onchain monetization linked to user behavior.
OP Stack Onchain Revenue
Over the past year, applications running on exchange-owned chains built with the OP Stack have expanded rapidly. OP Labs highlighted a striking example: Morpho’s total value locked (TVL) on Coinbase-backed Base increased from $48 million at the start of 2025 to more than $960 million by year-end—almost 20-fold growth. OP Labs attributed this surge primarily to lending products integrated directly into the Coinbase app rather than to wallet-based user acquisition.
Base has become Morpho’s second-largest chain globally and accounted for 32% of Morpho’s application fees in the second half of 2025. OP Labs noted that this share was roughly 13 times that of Arbitrum and about 60 times that of OP Mainnet.
Kraken’s Ink chain also demonstrated strong user growth, adding over one million unique addresses since December 2024. OP Labs reported that fewer than 0.6% of those addresses had any prior onchain history with Kraken; the remaining 99.4% were net-new onchain wallets. OP Labs presented these figures as evidence that exchange-owned chains are expanding the onchain market rather than just shifting existing users between networks.
OP Labs also highlighted the rapid adoption of Tydro, the Aave V3 white-label lending protocol launched on Ink in October 2025. Tydro reached $100 million in TVL within its first 24 hours and exceeded $500 million within 90 days. OP Labs compared this to similar Aave deployments on neutral Layer 2 networks, which previously required between 142 and 721 days to reach comparable milestones.
Kyle Jenke, Chief Business Officer at the Optimism Foundation, said the H2 results reflect a structural change from the old model, where exchanges earned revenue from trading while external networks captured subsequent value. He said:
“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 broader ecosystem, OP Stack chains reached several record highs in H2 2025: $16.33 billion in total value, $6.8 billion held in DeFi TVL, and 3.6 billion processed transactions. These metrics represented all-time highs across more than 50 live chains serving exchanges, consumer applications, financial infrastructure, and developer platforms.
Regulated companies are also adopting the OP Stack for institutional blockchain initiatives. For example, Bitpanda’s Vision Chain uses the OP Stack for institutional finance aligned with Europe’s MiCA and MiFID II frameworks, while Japan’s Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities launched the regulated, precious-metals-backed Zipangcoin on OP Mainnet. These deployments underscore growing institutional interest in OP Stack solutions that meet regulatory requirements and support large-scale, compliant onchain use cases.