Understanding the Fee Multiple (MCap / Annual Protocol Fees)
What users paid to use a protocol over a year, set against what the market pays for its token — and the honest caveat about where that money actually goes.
What is the Earnings Multiple?
DefiLlama tracks the fees users pay to a protocol: swap fees on an exchange, interest on a lending market, staking commission. We take a full year of those fees and divide the token's market capitalization by them. A multiple of 10 means the market values the token at ten years of current earnings. A multiple of 500 means it is priced on expectations rather than on income.
Why It Matters
Almost every other number in crypto describes the market's opinion of itself: price, market cap, trading volume, momentum. Fees describe something outside that loop — money that users handed over in exchange for a service. It is the one input here that could not be produced by traders alone, which is exactly what makes it hard to inflate.
How We Use It
The fee multiple carries 10% of the Value Score. Our thresholds sit on the observed distribution across the catalogue rather than on equity-market intuition: the median coin with fee data trades at roughly 77 times annual fees, the cheapest quarter below 10. One caveat matters more than the ratio itself: fees are what users PAID, not necessarily what token holders RECEIVE. Lido's fees accrue to the protocol; Bitcoin's transaction fees go to miners and reach BTC holders not at all. Read the multiple as a measure of economic activity relative to valuation, not as earnings per token. Only 113 of 1000 coins report a full year of fees; the rest are dropped and their weight redistributed, because most tokens are not protocols and never charge a fee. We use a full year rather than annualising a single day: one quiet Sunday should not become a valuation.
MCap / Fees < 15
Cheap against real usage
MCap / Fees > 600
Priced on expectation, not earnings
Current Top 5 Coins by Protocol Fees (MCap / Annual Fees)
How our algorithm currently scores the leading crypto assets on the "Protocol Fees (MCap / Annual Fees)" component. Higher = stronger undervaluation signal on this single dimension.
Worked Example
Canton (CC) leads with a Protocol Fees (MCap / Annual Fees) value of 85/100. On this single dimension, Canton currently shows a clear undervaluation signal. Click Canton above to see the full score breakdown across all 10 metrics.