Crypto Power Shift

Follow the Fees

Author

Archie Royce
October 24, 2025

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GET IT RIGHT 🎯 

DeFi’s Real Winners 🏆️   

  

The crypto market is still wobbling from the latest tariff tantrum — but the real action isn’t in price charts or policy headlines. The true war is happening on-chain, and it’s not about who’s got the fastest transactions anymore. It’s about who’s getting paid.

Welcome to the Application War — where every blockchain project is clawing for traders, liquidity, and those sweet, sweet fees. Forget memes and moonshots; this battle decides which projects actually make money… and which ones just make noise.

The Great Divide 🧱 

Once upon a time, the great debate was which chain is faster? Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche — they were all flexing block times and gas fees like bodybuilders at a tech convention. That war’s over. The survivors are either dominant or hyper-specialized.

Take Hyperliquid (HYPE) — built for perpetuals trading, and now raking in record fees. Or BNB Chain, which just clocked its highest revenue since early 2022, pulling in over $70 million in October.

Meanwhile, most other chains are struggling. Their fee revenue is falling even as usage rises. Why?

Two reasons:

  1. The Race to the Bottom – Competing to be “the cheapest chain” means cutting fees faster than you grow users. That’s like selling dollar pizzas at a loss and wondering why your restaurant’s broke.

  2. Market Efficiency – The bots took over. Retail traders (a.k.a. us) used to bumble around and pay fat fees. Now algorithms do everything faster and cheaper — great for efficiency, terrible for network income.

Age of the Apps 🗺️ 

So where’s the real money flowing? Not the blockchains — the applications built on top.

DeFi apps are having a field day:

  • TVL hit $172.98 billion, a four-year high.

  • Stablecoins soared to a record $306.89 billion.

  • DEX volume exploded to $178.23 billion, while perp DEXs hit a mind-bending $336.94 billion in a single week.

The biggest winners? Lending protocols.

Aave alone generated nearly $100 million in fees in September and might beat that this month. Morpho and Spark are printing cash, too — proving that sometimes the boring stuff (loans and interest rates) ends up being DeFi’s real rockstars.

Staking’s Midlife Crisis 🏟️ 

Ethereum still wears the staking crown, but its yields are… well, uninspired. Lido and EigenLayer had their moment, but fees are cooling. The new contenders — Binance’s staked ETH and Ether.Fi — are chasing higher-risk, higher-reward plays. Simple staking? That’s so 2022.

The Takeaway 🥡 

The crypto food chain has flipped. Infrastructure is the utility company — stable but dull. The real growth, innovation, and revenue are now with the apps that make blockchains actually useful.

So if you’re still staring at base-layer tokens waiting for fireworks, maybe it’s time to look up. The real profits are being made one layer higher — in the apps quietly eating the chains.

Simple Formula 🍹 

The crypto market can be a thrilling ride—right up until it ejects you through the windshield. But every investor eventually learns the same painful lesson: it’s not just about picking the right coin. It’s about surviving long enough to enjoy the wins.

Here’s a simple, battle-tested blueprint to keep both your portfolio and your sanity intact the next time volatility throws a tantrum.

Step 1: Spread Risk 🪂 

Some investors treat crypto like a one-way ticket to early retirement. Every dollar goes into the latest hot coin, and diversification is something “other people” do. Then the crash hits—and suddenly those “other people” look like geniuses.

The smarter play? Use stable, income-generating assets as your foundation—things that quietly compound without demanding attention every ten minutes. Then, and only then, take a small slice of that capital and swing for asymmetric upside in crypto.
The idea isn’t to kill your ambition—it’s to keep you from detonating it.

Step 2: Stay Balanced ⚖️ 

The market shouldn’t feel like a horror movie. If you’re checking prices at 2 a.m., heart racing, mentally rewriting your résumé—it’s not discipline, it’s danger.

A position that robs you of sleep is a position that’s too large. Shrink it until you can close your eyes without picturing candlestick charts. The thrill of massive exposure fades quickly; the peace of a balanced portfolio lasts longer than any bull run.

Step 3: Take Profits 📈 

There’s a universal truth in markets: unrealized gains have a bad habit of disappearing. The moment you start telling friends you’ve “made it,” the market starts plotting your downfall.

When profits appear, skim some off the top. Don’t apologize for it. You can’t compound what you don’t keep, and there will always be another asymmetric opportunity waiting around the corner.

The Lesson 📚️ 

Volatility is the price of admission for life-changing returns. But you can’t pay that price if you burn out emotionally—or blow up financially.

The strongest investors aren’t the ones chasing the biggest wins. They’re the ones still standing when everyone else has rage-quit the market.

Risk management doesn’t kill ambition—it fuels it. Once the fear of total collapse is gone, the game changes. The mind clears. And for the first time, you can actually let your winners run.

That’s the blueprint: calm over chaos, structure over stress, and freedom through discipline.


COIN SPOTLIGHT 🔍️ 

Buying the Dip  🍧  

Let’s be honest — Uptober has been a weird one. Three weeks in, and it feels like we’ve lived an entire market cycle. Prices moon, collapse, and moon again before lunch. The bears got their 48-hour revenge arc, and most traders got absolutely rinsed. Except, of course, for that one token called $USELESS — which somehow isn’t living up to its name.

Still, this is crypto. Hope springs eternal. So, let’s slap the degen hat back on, ignore the trauma, and look at three plays that might just pump their way through the rest of the month.

  1. $STBL 🪙 

    First up is $STBL, a token that’s been doing its best impression of a ski slope since September. It dumped to $0.10 faster than you could say “unlock schedule,” and yet — there’s light at the end of the liquidation tunnel.

    Why? Because its shiny new stablecoin, $USST, is finally minting, it just scored a partnership with Ondo Finance, and buybacks are scheduled to kick in soon. There’s still $30 million in token unlocks this week, so brace yourself. But once that flood clears, this thing might actually be free to run.

    Bottom line: It’s on Binance Smart Chain. It’s risky. But there’s a nonzero chance it bounces hard. Which, in degen math, basically means “buy a little and pray.”

  2. $STRPNK ⛽️ 

    Remember Punk Strategy? Most traders have moved on — but the ecosystem didn’t. The main token, $PNKSTR, is still quietly doing its thing, and $STRPNK is the deflationary little brother built to burn itself into glory.

    Here’s how it works: every trade pays a 10% fee. Most goes to the treasury, which then uses the funds to open $PNKSTR positions, close them for profit, and buy back and burn $STRPNK. It’s like a perpetual motion machine for degens who like charts with fewer ups than downs.

    If $PNKSTR catches fire again, $STRPNK could move faster — and harder. It’s sitting around a $1.5M cap, which means it only takes a little spark (and a lot of hopium) to make it rip.

    Bottom line: It’s on Ethereum. You’ll need Definitive to grab it. And probably a stiff drink.

  3. $VPAY 💳️ 

    Last up: $VPAY, the crypto card token. It just rolled out its v1.1 update, connects to the Visa network, and plans to launch a physical card soon. Sounds like a real product, right? Which is practically heresy in degen land.

    It mooned, then immediately dumped — naturally — but the concept is solid: spend your bags in the real world. Just proceed with caution. The last “crypto card” token that looked this good ended with collective tears and 80% drawdowns.

The Wrap 🎁 

Uptober’s been chaos, but the degens remain undeterred. Between liquidation charts, stablecoin experiments, and credit cards for the chronically online, the show must go on.

So, if you’re still here, still holding, and still pretending your portfolio’s “for the long term,” congratulations — you’ve earned your badge of resilience (or stubbornness).

And if you’re betting on the next pump… maybe keep a little dry powder for when the dip dips again.


STAGE RIGHT 🎬️     


NOTABLE QUOTES 📚️ 

“Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable.”
 
— Epictetus


GARAGE LOGIC ☕️

Accelerate Success 🧿  

Peter Theil asks entrepreneurs: “What's preventing you from achieving your 10-year goals in 6 months?” This question forces you to think in a radically different way.

Two audiobooks that highlight the power of magnification and compression. 

The Science of Scaling tells you to 10X your goal. This forces you to ignore everything that doesn't truly matter. Listen HERE.

Time is a Tool tells you to compress your timeline. This forces you to find the highest leverage priorities. Listen HERE.

Magnification and compression create clarity.
 


FINAL SPIN 📽️ 


LAST CHAPTER 📺️ 


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