Blockchain revenue on track for about $100 billion in 2026, down 28%, as broader-economy income edges past chains in Q3, 1kx says

Blockchain revenue in 2026 is on track for about $100 billion, 28% below the roughly $140 billion of 2025, according to the annual revenue report from 1kx, an investment firm that backs crypto projects. The page shows only “October 2026” and its metadata gives 29 October, with data through the third quarter. The same report says income from what it calls the broader economy, a group led by stablecoin reserve income, prediction markets and trading in tokenized real-world assets, passed the income of blockchains themselves for the first time in Q3 2026.

Two limits come with those headlines. The $100 billion is an estimate: 1kx annualises the first three quarters, so no full-year figure exists yet. And the crossover is thin. A footnote gives about $5.3 billion for the broader economy against about $5.1 billion for blockchain infrastructure, a gap of roughly $0.2 billion. It names no period: treating those as third-quarter figures is our reading, explained below.

Chains are earning far less, and more of what the industry collects now comes from sports bets and weekend trading in stock exposure, on top of the interest on stablecoin reserves. Read the numbers with the source in mind: 1kx invests in crypto projects, and this report extends its own Cost of Trust thesis.

Blockchain revenue in 2026 is an annualised estimate, not a result

The report’s revenue chart shows $74.3 billion for the first three quarters and adds $24.8 billion as an extrapolated fourth quarter. That makes the $99 billion 1kx shows for 2026, rounded to about $100 billion in its text. A chart note says so: the 2026 figure annualises Q1 to Q3.

The method assumes a fourth quarter equal to the average of the first three. 1kx says revenue rose in Q3 from Q2, so that assumption could prove low. A weak quarter would make it high. Either way, the year-on-year fall compares an estimate with a completed year.

The 28% matches the report’s chart labels, $138 billion for 2025 against $99 billion for 2026. The rounded $140 billion and $100 billion would give 29%. The Defiant and Bitcoin.com both wrote about 30%. In the report itself, the 30% is a different number: the fall in crypto prices.

Revenue fell with prices, and chain income fell further

1kx ties the decline to the market. Revenue relative to total crypto market value was flat year on year, it says. Averaging the quarterly Bitcoin prices on its chart gives about $101,600 for 2025 and about $73,100 for the first three quarters of 2026, a 28% drop on our arithmetic. Its 2025 edition, From Mania to Maturity, had already described base layers losing their share as applications grew.

The split for 2026 shows how far that has gone. DeFi and finance, a category that includes centralized exchanges such as Binance, takes $65 billion, or 66% of the total. Blockchain infrastructure takes $22 billion, its lowest since 2020. Other sectors share $12 billion, with consumer applications the largest at 9% of the total.

Most of the DeFi and finance money never touches a chain as a user-paid fee. Centralized exchanges and derivatives venues make up 42% of the category, and other income such as stablecoin reserve income and yields 29%. Onchain user-paid fees are 13%.

First-half numbers show the damage to chains. Their revenue fell 39%, from $19 billion to $12 billion, while staking and mining income, now about 90% of what they earn, dropped 37% to $10.4 billion. Onchain transaction fees halved to $1.2 billion even as transactions rose 18%, from 108 billion to 127 billion. Actual transaction fees are now under 3% of all blockchain revenue, against 9% at the 2021 peak.

Cheap block space explains part of that, and it is the point of both 1kx reports: applications can charge users more as the base layer charges less. The DeFi and finance total fell only 16% in the first half, to $32.6 billion. Inside it, centralized exchange income dropped 25% and decentralized exchange fees 50%, the areas most exposed to prices.

Where the money comes from now: stablecoin income first, prediction markets fastest

Revenue tied to institutions and the broader economy reaches 30% of the 2026 total, 1kx says, and 33% in Q3 alone. That 30% divides into 12% for institutions and 18% for the broader economy. The report’s chart labels 18% for 2023, and its data for 2025 works out at about 19% by our calculation.

The two halves did not move together. Institutional revenue fell 10% in the first half to $6.1 billion, pulled down by asset management, custody and staking fees. All of the gain came from the broader economy, up 58% from $5.1 billion to $8.0 billion.

The table changes how the crossover should be described. Stablecoin issuance and reserve income makes up about 52% of broader-economy revenue by our calculation from the chart, and 1kx describes reserve income such as Circle’s as earned on Treasury bill yield. Prediction markets and tokenized assets supplied most of the growth, but they did not supply most of the money. Stablecoin income has been the largest component since the Federal Reserve raised rates in 2022, according to 1kx.

Prediction markets: fees up 19 times in a year

Prediction market fees rose from $86 million in Q3 2025 to about $1.66 billion in Q3 2026 on the report’s chart, which draws on Allium, DefiLlama and Robinhood filings and estimates Robinhood’s third quarter. The report’s text says only $1.5 billion or more for Q3. 1kx estimates they will pass $4 billion this year and says the platforms settled about $55 billion in Q3. Kalshi and Polymarket dominate, and most of the volume is on sports. Crypto-related contracts are estimated at under 15% of volume, a share worth setting against reports of a $2.7 billion week in Bitcoin bets.

Brokers are moving in as distributors. Robinhood and Coinbase reported about $200 million of prediction-market revenue in Q2, mostly through Kalshi, the report says, and for Robinhood that beat either equities or crypto trading. Our report on Robinhood’s third quarter covers the same shift from the company’s side.

Tokenized assets: stock exposure on weekends

Perpetual futures on real-world assets reached about $2.2 trillion of volume in Q3, 18% of all perpetual volume, against $18 billion a year earlier. Stocks are 55% of that, ahead of commodities at 23%. 1kx estimates about $1 billion of trading fees in the first half, at an average of 7 basis points. For the difference between these contracts and owning a share, see our guide to what tokenized stocks really give you.

Timing is part of the appeal. Tokenized stock volume on Robinhood Chain passed $13 billion in Q3, with more than 70% of it traded while US exchanges were closed, the report says. A footnote credits Blockworks, cites a Dune query showing about $10 billion for Q3 and attributes the 70% to Robinhood, so this figure depends on who is counting.

Payments are smaller but growing. Crypto card spending tripled from a year earlier to about $3.4 billion in Q3, and the report’s text puts cards, remittances and on- and off-ramps at more than $500 million for the first half, above the $0.4 billion on its chart.

How narrow the crossover is, and what it hides

The gap of about $0.2 billion is around 4% of either figure, on rounded numbers. The footnote does not say what period the $5.3 billion and $5.1 billion cover. It hangs on the sentence about Q3, and we read them as third-quarter figures because the totals fit a single quarter: the report gives the broader economy $8.0 billion for the first half and its chart data shows $13.4 billion for the nine months, which leaves about $5.4 billion for Q3.

Over the year so far, chains are still ahead. The chart data gives blockchain infrastructure $16.3 billion against $13.4 billion through Q3, or 22% against 18% of revenue. In 2025 the gap was wide, at about $36.0 billion to $11.5 billion. So the claim is about one quarter and a trend, not about 2026 as a whole.

The footnote carries another condition. The infrastructure figure only counts amounts not already placed in other categories, such as the share of staking rewards captured by institutions or DeFi protocols. A different sorting could shift a $0.2 billion margin.

It could also reverse with the market. 1kx says staking and mining are about 90% of chain income, and that other income depends mainly on asset prices and external yields. Higher crypto prices would lift chains quickly. Lower interest rates would cut the stablecoin income at the core of the broader-economy group. The report does not model either case.

What the report cannot show

Much of this is estimated. The report combines onchain data from 2,621 protocols with the earnings of 104 public companies, but offchain fees are often inferred from onchain data. Most prediction-market fees cannot be traced onchain, so 1kx uses Allium-based estimates. Exchange volumes are self-reported. Binance alone appears as a range, $5.8 billion to $7 billion for the first half.

The 18% share of perpetual volume has its own caveat: 1kx limits total perpetual volume to 15 large exchanges, and CoinGecko’s wider total is about twice as big. Measured against that, the share would be smaller.

Vocabulary matters too. In this report, “fees” means what users pay, the top line of a business, and the revenue total also counts other income such as mining rewards. Profit is out of scope, so nothing here says who made money. Many data sites use the words differently, a problem we explain in our guide to measuring DeFi fees, volume and users.

Then there is the author. 1kx calls itself an investment firm and counts 168 investments. Its portfolio page lists Solana, one of the chains in this report, but not Kalshi, Polymarket or Robinhood. Its disclaimer says it has not independently verified third-party information, that some of it came from portfolio companies of its funds, and that “1kx may hold positions in certain projects or assets discussed in this publication.” That is no proof of bias, and it is context for a report that ends on a recovery.

We read the web version of the report; the full deck sits behind a download form. The visible date is only “October 2026”. The 29 October date comes from the page metadata, and The Defiant covered the report on 30 October.

Who collects: public companies at 16%, token protocols at 26%

Public companies earn 16% of blockchain revenue in 2026, up from 7% in 2022. Six of them hold about 60% of the listed total, led by Coinbase with $2.6 billion in the first half, a figure that includes $0.66 billion of Circle income, and Circle with $1.4 billion. Protocols with tokens take 26%, their lowest share since 2020, though 1kx argues that overstates their decline because chain fees and token launches have shrunk.

Fee leadership among chains is shifting as well. Robinhood Chain launched in July and took 14% of ecosystem fees in Q3, third place, while Ethereum and Solana together fell below 50% for the first time, to 44%.

What 1kx expects next, and what to watch

1kx expects revenue to recover and the shift toward institutions and the broader economy to continue, citing regulation and tokenization. The web version gives no number for 2027. Forecasts from a sector investor are one view, not a finding, and the report’s own disclaimer says actual results will differ from its projections.

Two things will test the picture. The fourth quarter will show whether $100 billion holds, and whether the broader economy stays ahead of chains for a second quarter. And Nasdaq’s planned 23-hour, five-day trading, due to start in December according to the report, will show how much weekend and overnight demand for tokenized stocks survives once Wall Street stays open longer.