Author｜ Joey Shin @IOSG

summary

The crypto industry constantly claims a lack of users, but the data tells a completely different story. Consumer-grade crypto has already reached tens of millions of active users, just outside the purview of Silicon Valley and New York. These people are in Manila, Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Hanoi, using Coins.ph (18 million users), MiniPay (4.2 million weekly active users), and Lemon Cash (ranked #1 in Argentina's app charts) daily, yet English-language media barely reports on them. Conversely, the protocols that Western VCs discuss daily don't even generate the same amount of active users in a whole day as Tron's shadow clearing network in just one hour.

Seven key findings: The crypto user problem is essentially a geographic problem; Tron is the most important consumer-grade public chain, but nobody talks about NYC and SF; on-chain e-commerce is practically nonexistent; the largest prediction market is centralized; revenue and user numbers often move in opposite directions; the perpetual DEX war is over; there are indeed truly profitable consumer-grade crypto companies—they just don't look like DeFi companies.

Payments and New Types of Banks: The users have always existed, they just weren't on the radar of VCs.

The general consensus is that for crypto to enter the mainstream and attract the next billion users, wallet UX is the bottleneck.

Data shows that the next billion users are already here, and the biggest bottleneck is not customer acquisition, but monetization.

Let's look at the current scale first. Telegram Wallet claims to have 150 million registered users (unverified – low confidence), so let's set that figure aside for now. Just looking at the verified data, the user base is already astonishing : Coins.ph has 18 million confirmed users in the Philippines, primarily operating on the Tron USDT track; MiniPay, Opera's mobile stablecoin wallet on Celo, had 14 million registered users and 4.23 million weekly active USDT users as of March 2026, with a monthly transaction volume of $153 million and on-chain activity growing by 506% year-on-year (high confidence – from a joint disclosure by Tether/Opera/Celo). Chipper Cash covers 7 million users in 9 African countries and recently achieved positive cash flow. Lemon Cash has 5.4 million downloads, ranking first among financial apps in Argentina and Peru, and its MAU has quadrupled since 2021. Paga processes 17 trillion naira in transactions annually in Nigeria, but the percentage related to crypto is unclear (medium confidence level).

Currently, the only payment company that has simultaneously achieved scale and revenue is RedotPay : 6 million users, $158 million in annualized revenue, and $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, with its valuation increasing 16-fold since its seed round (high confidence level – The Block, CoinDesk, company disclosures). RedotPay's model is a crypto-to-fiat card processor targeting the Asia-Pacific region, charging commission on transactions with zero chargeback risk – essentially a crypto-native Visa issuer-acquirer. It is currently the clearest case demonstrating that consumer-grade crypto can generate real, recurring, non-incentivized revenue at scale.

Another revenue highlight is Exodus, which, according to its SEC 8-K filing, reported revenue of $121.6 million in 2025 (high confidence level). It is one of the few publicly listed and audited crypto consumer companies on the US stock market. Its revenue comes from exchange and staking fees from 1.5 million monthly active users (MAU), and its stock is listed on the NYSE US Board under the ticker symbol EXOD.

Ether.fi's Cash product is the most noteworthy native DeFi entrant: profitable in its first year, with over 70,000 cards issued, Cash currently contributes approximately 50% of total revenue, generating $2.8 million in monthly income (high confidence level – verified daily by TokenTerminal). It proves that a DeFi protocol is capable of creating truly consumer-grade products – although its 200,000 total users are still relatively small.

Customer acquisition in emerging markets has been resolved; monetization remains an issue . The gap between MiniPay's 4.2 million weekly active users and its undisclosed (extremely low) revenue may represent one of the biggest unsolved problems in the crypto industry—and also its biggest opportunity.

Marginal improvement vs. non-incremental value: Fine-tuning screening criteria

A common counter-argument to consumer-grade crypto investment is that crypto must provide non-incremental value relative to fiat currency solutions to offset integration costs. Data shows that this premise itself is flawed. Consider two of the clearest data points comparing payment categories. MiniPay's advantages over traditional mobile money products like M-Pesa are, at best, marginal for users—slightly cheaper transfers, slightly wider USD exposure, and slightly broader cross-border coverage. It has 4.2 million weekly active users, but its revenue is essentially zero. RedotPay's advantages over traditional Visa issuers and acquirers are also marginal in terms of consumer experience—swiping a card, buying a hot dog—but the underlying mechanisms are structurally different: zero chargeback risk, instant cross-border settlement, and no reliance on correspondent banks. RedotPay generates $158 million in annualized revenue from 6 million users.

Both products are working and have product-market fit (PMF). The difference lies in the fact that RedotPay's "marginal but structural" advantage can compound into pricing power, while MiniPay's "marginal and superficial" advantage cannot. Zero chargebacks are not a feature users will notice, but it represents approximately 1.5% of the gross profit margin permanently captured by the card issuer for every transaction. Slightly cheaper transfers are something users only notice once and then stop valuing after getting used to it.

Therefore, the correct screening question is not "Is this non-incremental?" but rather "Does this marginal improvement reflect the structural characteristics of unit economy?" If the answer is yes—payout risk, settlement timeliness, correspondent banking, capital efficiency, custody costs—then a product that feels almost unchanged to the user can still compound into a large business. If the answer is no, then even if the product has tens of millions of users, it has no investment value. Consumer-grade encryption falls into both categories, and conflating them has already cost this category an entire generation of capital.

e-commerce

It is generally believed that encrypted payments are gradually being adopted by e-commerce companies; it's only a matter of time.

Data shows that no on-chain e-commerce protocol on DeFiLlama generates more than $10,000 in daily protocol revenue. It's not just "very little," it's literally zero.

This chapter doesn't discuss the initial competition between rivals, but rather the absence of competitors. After auditing all the protocols and publicly disclosed companies tracked by DeFiLlama and TokenTerminal, we found only one player worth mentioning: Travala, a centralized travel booking platform with $7.17 million in revenue in February 2026 (medium confidence level – self-reported, no independent verification). Travala is not a protocol; it's a travel agency that accepts cryptocurrency.

UQUID claims to have 220 million users and 50 million monthly visits (the 220 million figure actually represents users of partner platforms—such as Binance—not UQUID's own users). The headline data is misleading, but its product catalog is indeed quite large—175 million physical goods and 546,000 digital goods—Tron's share of its trading volume doubled to 39% in the first half of 2025, and 54% of transactions were denominated in USDT-TRC20. However, it lacks publicly available revenue data, and its user numbers are questionable.

Gift card and voucher service provider Bitrefill has monthly revenue of approximately $1 million (low confidence level – Growjo estimate, historically inaccurate). Aside from this, there are no other noteworthy on-chain e-commerce protocols.

What truly exists is a shadow e-commerce economy operating on the Tron USDT track—but it's peer-to-peer and entirely informal. Coins.ph processes remittances from overseas Filipino workers, with funds flowing into retail consumption. Nigeria's P2P ecosystem drives $59 billion in crypto transactions annually through OTC platforms and USD savings accounts (according to Chainalysis), serving as an alternative to a crippled banking system. In Argentina, SUBE bus top-ups are completed via Tron USDT and cash OTC channels. Vietnamese freelancers receive their wages in TRC-20 USDT and then exchange it through local P2P networks.

This is real economic activity—but it's not e-commerce infrastructure. No protocol truly captures any part of it. The entire crypto-native e-commerce stack—product selection, checkout, escrow, fulfillment tracking, dispute resolution, points—is almost entirely blank.

How much of these demands will remain after compliance is achieved?

Before declaring this the biggest product gap in crypto, we must first answer a more difficult question: how much of the existing demand is structural, and how much is regulatory arbitrage? The honest assessment is that the vast majority is regulatory arbitrage. Today, the mainstream use cases on the Tron-USDT e-commerce track fall into three categories: the need for USD exposure from users in capital-controlled regions (Argentina, Venezuela, Nigeria)—these users cannot legally hold USD through traditional channels; VAT, sales tax, and import duties avoidance, especially on digital goods and gift cards—tax authorities have difficulty verifying buyer identities; and cross-border freelance and gig pay that bypasses bank controls—primarily in Vietnam, Iran, and parts of Africa. UQUID's product catalog is heavily biased towards gift cards, phone credit top-ups, and digital goods—these categories exist precisely because they can convert opaque crypto balances into consumable fiat currency equivalents with virtually no identity friction.

This is crucial to the investment argument because the survival rate of regulatory arbitrage needs varies drastically under compliance. Domestic VAT and tax evasion needs vanish the moment KYC is mandated at the merchant level—these users aren't paying for a better checkout experience, but for the lack of a tax ID field; once required, their value disappears immediately. The need to circumvent foreign exchange controls is more persistent because its underlying issues (Argentina's capital controls, Nigeria's naira, Venezuela's bolivar) are structural and long-standing. However, platforms serving these needs cannot legally operate within the necessary corridors. They can grow large, but they cannot register, conduct pricing financing, or sign agreements with local fintech companies—and these partnerships are crucial for their competitive advantage.

The opportunities to survive in compliance are narrow but real. Traditional, slow, or expensive cross-border merchant settlements—Latin America ↔ Asia, Africa ↔ anywhere, freelancer payments—can operate under any regulatory framework because the underlying value proposition is that "stablecoins are structurally cheaper than SWIFT," rather than "stablecoins help you circumvent the rules." B2B settlements between SMEs in different jurisdictions also fall into this category. The same applies to merchant settlements for cross-border digital services.

Therefore, the notion of a "$5 trillion global e-commerce" market is a flawed framework for this opportunity. The truly investable area is closer to the $200-400 billion cross-border B2B and freelance payments market—whose value proposition can transition from the gray area to the legal market. Domestic crypto checkout for Western consumers—what most "crypto payments" rhetoric imagines—is not this opportunity, and never has been. Protocols that win this category look more like a "stablecoin version of Wise" than a "crypto version of Shopify." For investors, the key question is whether a team is building a market for survival or for a market that is about to disappear.

Speculation: The perpetual war is long over

It is generally believed that decentralized perpetual systems are a competitive market, with dYdX, GMX, and others vying for market share with Hyperliquid.

Data shows that Hyperliquid has won. GMX and dYdX are not competitors, but protocols in their final decline.

Hyperliquid currently controls over 70% of all on-chain perpetual marketplace open interest, with a monthly notional trading volume of $105 billion and transaction fees reaching $58.8 million in March alone—an annualized figure exceeding $640 million (high confidence level—TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, Dune). In the most recent reporting period, its transaction fees increased by 56% month-over-month. It has executed over $800 million in HYPE buybacks, making it one of the few protocols where token value capture is not just empty talk.

Compared to established players, GMX earns $5,000 daily and has around 500 daily active users. dYdX earns $10,000 to $13,000 daily, has 1,300 daily active users, and its transaction fees have declined by 84% year-over-year. This isn't a struggling competitor—this is an agreement where the race has ended mathematically, not strategically.

EdgeX's data is noteworthy: verified 30-day transaction fees totaled $14.7 million, with a fee retention rate of 73%, running on StarkEx ZK-rollup. Our previous dataset contained an aggregation error, initially showing $2.5 million—after correction, edgeX firmly holds the second position among on-chain perpetual venues ranked by revenue (high confidence—verified daily by TokenTerminal). Whether edgeX can maintain its growth or follow the same path as GMX/dYdX remains the only unanswered question in this category.

Hyperliquid deserves close analysis because its success isn't based on a better trading UX—its differences from GMX or dYdX in order execution are real, but only marginal. Its victory lies in liquidity depth, listing speed, and brand recognition. Once perpetual liquidity is concentrated in one place, the network effect becomes almost unshakeable: traders flock to the narrowest spreads, the narrowest spreads attract the highest trading volume, and trading volume returns to where the traders are. The perpetual DEX category has already passed the winner-takes-all phase; to compete with Hyperliquid's capital deployment in this category is tantamount to burning money.

Prediction Markets: This is a story about category selection, not about decentralization.

Another speculative category worth examining is prediction markets, with the mainstream narrative being that Polymarket validated the on-chain prediction market approach. The data tells a different story—one whose lessons have absolutely nothing to do with decentralization.

Kalshi is an off-chain/CEX-like platform. The comparison itself is where the insight lies.

According to a Bloomberg report (high confidence level), as of March 2026, Kalshi's annualized revenue reached $1.5 billion, with a valuation of $22 billion. In February 2026 alone, it processed over $10 billion in transactions, representing a 12-fold increase in volume within six months. Sports betting contributed 89% of its revenue. Its on-chain alternative, Polymarket, has monthly revenue of $4.7 million to $5.9 million and 688,000 MAU. Kalshi's monthly revenue is approximately 25 times that of Polymarket.

The lazy explanation is that Polymarket has UX issues. From most product dimensions, Polymarket is the better built—its order book is cleaner, settlement is faster, and the trader experience is even more mature than Kalshi's. UX can't justify a 25x revenue difference. The defense that Polymarket "hasn't started charging yet" actually makes the comparison worse, not better: if Polymarket is losing 25 to 1 without any fees, the underlying revenue potential gap is likely much larger than the surface figures suggest.

The real explanation lies in product category selection, distribution channels, and jurisdictional positioning—these three things have nothing to do with decentralization.

Kalshi chose sports. Sports is a high-frequency, mass-market, and structurally recurring category: betting opportunities are available weekly, daily, and yearly; the rules are generally understood; and audiences update themselves with each new season. Polymarket positioned itself in the politics and event markets—these are decentralized, election-cycle-dependent, and structurally low-frequency. Users who came to Polymarket for the 2024 election have no reason to return in March 2026. Users who came to Kalshi for the NFL have a reason to come back every Sunday. Frequent participation compoundes into liquidity, liquidity compoundes into spreads, and spreads compound into more users. Polymarket was on the wrong end of the flywheel.

The second factor is distribution. Kalshi built a B2B2C model, integrating its order book with brokerage platforms, fintech applications, and partners, rather than relying on direct-to-consumer customer acquisition. Polymarket, on the other hand, only operates on a DTC basis, with each active trader bearing the full marketing costs. Crucially, Kalshi operates legally under the CFTC in the US, while Polymarket—following its 2022 settlement with the same agency—is completely geographically blocked from US users. The largest English-language prediction market audience is structurally inaccessible to on-chain products. Kalshi doesn't just win in execution; it possesses a market that Polymarket is legally prohibited from accessing.

The implications for evaluating forecasting market projects are very specific. The right due diligence questions are: (1) how frequently do you participate in the selected product category; (2) does the project have a B2B2C distribution path, or does it rely on direct customer acquisition; and (3) what is the regulatory stance in the most accessible market. The degree of decentralization is basically irrelevant to the results. Polymarket lost 25 to 1 because it chose the wrong product category, the wrong distribution model, and the wrong jurisdiction—roughly in this order of importance.

The inferences of this chapter

There are two key points regarding the speculative sector:

(1) Once a winner has emerged in a product category, then the winner has truly emerged, and capital should no longer be invested in that category;

(2) The mechanism for winners is not decentralization, UX or token economic model - perpetuity relies on liquidity concentration, and prediction market relies on category selection and distribution.

Both conclusions point to the DeFi multi-layered proposition: the most defensible consumer-side positioning is to wrap a compliant front-end around a crypto-native back-end. Ether.fi Cash is currently the cleanest example. CrediFi and other next-generation payment-related products all belong to the same model.

Stablecoin infrastructure: Tron is the most important consumer-grade public blockchain, yet nobody talks about it.

Common perception : Ethereum L2 and Solana are the main consumer-grade public blockchains, while Tron is an established network primarily used for cheap transfers.

Data shows that Tron's monthly stablecoin trading volume exceeds $600 billion—comparable to Visa—and it boasts 14.3 million MAU, 72.8 million USDT holders, and a stablecoin speed ratio of 0.2–0.3 times—proving its activity is primarily for payments rather than speculation. It possesses a whole suite of unlabeled protocol shadow economies, completely ignored by Western media.

The numbers are staggering. The USDT-TRC20 supply on Tron is $86.4 billion. Monthly transaction volume ranges from $600 billion to $1.35 trillion (lower limit: high confidence – TronScan, TokenTerminal; upper limit: includes recurring transaction volume). On March 29, 2026, the single-day transaction volume reached $44.9 billion. The network processes over 2 million transactions daily, covering 13.8 million MAUs, with an estimated 80% or more transactions under $1,000, and 60%–70% under $100. This is a retail payments network, not a settlement layer dominated by whales.

Speed is a key analytical signal. Tron's USDT speed is 0.2–0.3x, meaning that on average, one US dollar worth of USDT on Tron turns over approximately once every 3 to 5 months. In contrast, speculative public chains can have speeds exceeding 10x—rapidly cycling between DeFi protocols, leveraged positions, and launchpads. Tron's stable, slow speed is characteristic of the payment track: money comes in, is used for a real-world transaction, and then remains in the wallet awaiting the next bill or remittance. The top ten USDT holders on Tron control only 8.7% of the supply—indicating widespread and decentralized retail distribution.

Then there's the shadow economy. Our audit of TronScan identified several unlabeled agreements that generated substantial revenue but had absolutely no English documentation:

CatFee generates $82,000 in daily fees. Nobody in the Western crypto media knows what it is. TRONSAVE generates $863,000 in monthly revenue, with no clear owner. These protocols operate in the shadow economy of Vietnamese P2P networks, Nigerian OTC platforms, Philippine remittance corridors, and Latin American cash channels. We estimate that billions of dollars flow daily through these unmarked clearinghouses—dynamic addresses, collection and settlement, and freelance payment infrastructure—effectively acting as a banking system for those excluded from traditional finance.

Celo is the fastest-growing public blockchain in its category, entirely driven by the integration of MiniPay and Tether. It saw a 506% year-over-year increase in unique users, a total of 12.6 million wallets, and a transaction volume of $153 million in December 2025 (high confidence level). However, its scale is still only a fraction of Tron's.

Ethereum remains the institutional settlement track—high fees limit retail use. Solana's stablecoin activity is dominated by transactions and Launchpad traffic (pump.fun, Jupiter, Meteora), not payments. BNB Chain handles $60 billion in monthly stablecoin transactions, primarily through CEX settlements. TON is a variable—Telegram wallet integration has brought massive registrations, but engagement depth remains unclear.

Summary: The Lifecycle of Regulatory Arbitrage and DeFi Mutants

Every successful consumer-grade crypto product in this survey has followed the same arc. It begins with regulatory arbitrage; accumulates capital and users in the gray area; withstands—or succumbs to—a compliance-driven event; and the part that emerges becomes legitimate financial infrastructure. The protocols and companies generating real revenue today are at different stages of this lifecycle, and their position determines the risk and return curve of the investment.

Phase 1 – The Gray Area Begins. A protocol or service emerges to address the problems that traditional finance refuses or is unable to serve, almost always due to some regulatory constraint. It features a small user base, high technological sophistication, and tolerance for legal ambiguity. Profit margins are extremely high because regulatory risk is priced into commissions. Tail risk is unlimited. Examples today include unlisted shadow clearinghouses on Tron (CatFee, TRONSAVE), the Nigerian P2P USDT platform, and early instances of pump.fun, NFTs, and even the early days of Hyperliquid.

Phase 2 – User and Capital Accumulation. PMF becomes undisputed. Trading volume increases, and users begin to come from outside the core technology circle. Western media begin to take notice, but regulation has not yet taken action. Tron's USDT economy is currently in this phase – 14.3 million MAU and monthly trading volume exceeding $600 billion. Pump.fun in 2024, Polymarket during the 2024 election cycle, and Hyperliquid today are all in this phase.

Phase 3 – Compliance Transition. A pivotal event – litigation, enforcement action, settlement, or proactive regulatory communication – drives a project's choice to legalize, fragment, or fail. This is the phase with the highest variance and is also the most valuable for analysis from an investment perspective. Polymarket's 2022 settlement with the CFTC, the $500 million lawsuit against pump.fun, and any future enforcement actions against offshore perpetual venues all fall into this phase. Most projects fail to fully navigate this stage.

Phase 4 – Legitimate Economy . The part that crossed over becomes sustainable, auditable, and financeable. Returns are compressed because businesses are now valued as fintech rather than as moonshot projects. Kalshi (CFTC regulated, valued at $22 billion), Exodus (NYSE U.S. listing, SEC filing), Circle (S-1 disclosure), and RedotPay (funded at comparable fintech multiples) are all located here.

By spreading out the curve like this, the timing of investment becomes more concrete. Stage 1 offers the greatest upside potential, but it's essentially untouchable for institutional capital—the underlying business can be wiped out by a single enforcement order, and underwriting becomes practically impossible. Stage 4 is already fully priced in; the multiples are multiples of fintech, and the asymmetry has disappeared. Stage 2 has historically been the stage with the best VC returns in this sector, but only if there's a credible path through Stage 3. The due diligence issue in Stage 2 is no longer about "whether the product is viable"—Stage 2 is clearly viable. The question is whether the business model can survive within compliance regulations.

Tron's shadow protocols won't pass this hurdle because their very existence is about circumventing regulations. Once Vietnam implements KYC for Tron USDT liquidity, CatFee's $82,000 daily fees will vanish instantly—users aren't paying for utility, but for "no identity." There's no compliant business model underneath. This is the fundamental difference between a "protocol with Product-Market Fit" and one that "only has regulatory arbitrage fit." Both can generate revenue, but only one is investable.

The DeFi mullet concept is directly derived from this framework. The success of products like Ether.fi Cash and the next generation of Latin American fintech stems from their compliant front-end wrapped around a crypto-native backend. Users neither see nor care about the blockchain. Regulators see a typical fintech platform. The protocol captures the economy of the "cheapest track." None of these projects have issued tokens yet—this in itself is a signal: value capture occurs at the equity level, not the token level, and the institutional investors who win in this cycle will be those holding equity positions, not token shares.

The three structural opportunities that repeatedly emerge throughout this briefing stem from this overall framework: monetization infrastructure in emerging markets (users are already present, but revenue hasn't materialized); e-commerce tracks for cross-border B2B and freelance payments (the surviving segment of the e-commerce gap); and the still-unexplored Tron neighboring protocol ecosystem, currently in stage 2 of its lifecycle. All three are best suited for entry using a DeFi mullet model; all three reward category selection rather than pure decentralization; and all three are currently undervalued because Western capital is still looking at the wrong dashboards.

Data Quality Appendix

All data in this report are accompanied by one of the following three confidence ratings:

High – Multiple independent sources, verifiable on-chain, or regulatory filings (such as Exodus SEC 8-K, TokenTerminal daily verification, Tether/Opera joint disclosure).
In China , the source is either a single credible source or a company's self-reported revenue with some independent corroboration (such as Travala's self-reported revenue or Coins.ph Latka's estimates).
Low – press releases, unverified claims, or estimates at the Growjo level (such as Telegram 150 million registered users, UQUID 220 million users, Bitget 90 million users).

IOSG Ventures | Q1 2026 | Data sourced from TokenTerminal, DeFiLlama, TronScan, Dune, SEC filings, Sensor Tower, and direct company disclosures. Unless otherwise stated, all data is as of March 2026.

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