Exchange-backed blockchain networks built on the OP Stack ecosystem pulled in more than $495 million in application revenue during the second half of 2025, according to data from the Optimism Foundation. The figure underscores how crypto exchanges are increasingly owning the full stack — settlement, distribution, and applications — that their users transact on.
Base and Morpho drive the numbers
Much of that revenue came from Base, the Coinbase-incubated layer-2. Morpho, a lending protocol, saw its total value locked on Base jump from $48 million at the start of 2025 to over $960 million by year-end — a nearly 20-fold increase. Base alone accounted for 32% of Morpho's application fees in the second half of the year, 13 times the share contributed by Arbitrum and 60 times that of OP Mainnet. “Exchanges now own the settlement, distribution, and application layers their users transact on,” said Kyle Jenke, Chief Business Officer at the Optimism Foundation.
Ink chain attracts net-new wallets
Kraken's OP Stack chain, Ink, added more than 1 million unique addresses since its December 2024 launch. Of those, 99.4% were net-new onchain wallets — meaning they hadn't held an address on any blockchain before. Tydro, a white-label lending protocol based on Aave V3 that runs on Ink, hit $100 million in total value locked within 24 hours of going live and surpassed $500 million in 90 days. The rapid growth suggests exchanges can funnel their existing user bases into new chains faster than permissionless alternatives.
Broader ecosystem numbers
The entire OP Stack ecosystem, which now spans over 50 live chains, secured $16.33 billion in total value, held $6.8 billion in DeFi TVL, and processed 3.6 billion transactions in the second half of 2025. Not all chains target retail. Bitpanda's Vision Chain uses the OP Stack for institutional finance, built to comply with Europe's MiCA and MiFID II regulations. Meanwhile, Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities launched Zipangcoin, a regulated precious-metals-backed token, on OP Mainnet. The diversity of use cases — from lending to commodities — shows the stack is being adopted far beyond simple token transfers.
What exchanges gain by owning the rails
By operating their own chains, exchanges capture fees that previously went to independent layer-2s or mainnet validators. They also control the transaction ordering, can enforce compliance rules at the protocol level, and keep users inside their own ecosystem. The $495 million in application revenue from H2 2025 came from fees paid by users interacting with apps on these chains — money that now flows to exchange-owned sequencers and token treasuries rather than third parties.
The question going forward is whether permissioned or semi-permissioned chains can sustain the same growth as fully open ones, especially as regulators in Europe and elsewhere tighten rules on self-custody and cross-chain transfers. For now, the exchanges are building fast — and the numbers show users are following.
