The Business of Open Blockchain: Who Gets the Fees and Why a Fund is Needed

<> does not provide investment advice; this material is published for informational purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a volatile asset that can lead to financial losses.

Part of the fees paid by users for transfers on the network may go to validators, while part may disappear from circulation. The project's fund relies on its own reserves, and the token holder may not receive anything at all. To assess the blockchain's economy, one must trace the entire flow of money.

In a regular company, a client's payment becomes its revenue. In a public blockchain, this connection is often absent. The network is supported by independent participants. Several teams may be involved in development. A separate fund finances research and grants. Another company sells services around the technology. User fees are distributed according to rules encoded in the protocol itself.

Therefore, metrics like how much the network earned from fees say nothing without additional explanations. It is important to understand who exactly received that amount.

Where User Fees Go

In Ethereum, the payment for a transaction consists of a base fee and an additional payment to the validator. The base part is destroyed: the paid ETH is permanently removed from circulation. The additional payment goes to the validator who proposed the block with the transaction. The Ethereum Foundation, which funds the development of the ecosystem, does not receive a percentage of this payment.

The official Ethereum documentation provides a simple calculation. When transferring 1 ETH, with a base gas price of 10 gwei and an additional payment of 2 gwei, the user will pay 0.000252 ETH. Of this, 0.00021 ETH will be destroyed, and 0.000042 ETH will go to the validator.

For the user, this is one fee. From an economic perspective, it already contains two different cash flows.

In Solana, the rules are different. The base fee is currently 5000 lamports—the minimum units of SOL—for one signature. Half of this amount is destroyed, and half goes to the validator. If the user pays extra for priority processing, that additional payment goes entirely to the validator.

Validators also have another source of income—staking rewards, which come from the participation of locked SOL in ensuring the network's operation. These are generated by issuing new coins. The validator retains the fee they set, and the remaining reward is distributed among SOL holders who delegated their coins to them for staking.

Thus, even in the case of the two largest networks, the term "fee" cannot be considered synonymous with "project revenue." Money may go to those who directly service the network or be completely destroyed.

If the Fund Does Not Receive Fees, How Does It Survive?

The Ethereum Foundation does not take a percentage from user transactions. The fund has its own treasury, from which research, software development, security, and other areas of Ethereum's development are funded.

In 2025, the fund first detailed the rules for managing these funds. At that time, the target annual spending level was about 15% of the treasury size, and the cash reserve was supposed to cover approximately 2.5 years of such expenses. In the future, the fund plans to gradually reduce the share of annual expenditures.

The treasury itself can also generate income. In February 2026, the Ethereum Foundation began staking about 70,000 ETH. Rewards from these coins are returned to the fund's treasury. This means that funds for the development of Ethereum and fees for using Ethereum exist separately.

The fund can sell part of its assets, earn income from its own capital, and distribute grants. Meanwhile, the network continues to operate according to its own rules, and fees are received by validators or destroyed by the protocol itself.

This structure explains why a fund may be needed for blockchain at all. Its purpose is not necessarily to profit from every transaction. It can finance work whose results are difficult to sell directly: research, security, software tools, and ecosystem development.

How to Profit from Free Code

The situation with developers is even more interesting. The code of many blockchain projects is open. A company can take it, modify it, and launch its own system without purchasing a license in the traditional sense.

One can look at how networks earn money using the example of the Optimism project.

Its technological foundation for launching networks is distributed as open-source software. However, starting in 2026, Optimism will also sell OP Enterprise — commercial support for companies that need their own network but do not want to monitor its infrastructure around the clock.

A client can use the open code independently or pay for Optimism specialists to assist with launching, updates, security, monitoring, and troubleshooting. In the fully managed option, OP Labs takes over the operation of the network. For the most critical systems, a 99.95% availability is claimed, with a response to serious failures within 15 minutes.

Here, the economics of open code is clearly visible. The technology is free, but the work around it is not necessarily so. Companies earn similarly on cloud infrastructure, technical support, and system operation, even though the software code is available to everyone.

How One Open Network Earns from Another

There is another option. Base — a network launched by Coinbase — is built on Optimism technology. Under an agreement, Base is obliged to transfer the larger of two amounts to the Optimism ecosystem: 2.5% of revenue from transaction processing or 15% of profits from such operations after data transfer costs to Ethereum.

This means that Optimism did not just write the code once, which Coinbase then took for free. There is a separate economic connection between the projects.

By 2026, many networks will operate on the same technological basis. Optimism receives a portion of their revenues. In the 12 months leading up to January 2026, such revenues amounted to 5868 ETH. Among the networks generating this income, Optimism lists Base, Unichain, Ink, World Chain, Soneium, and its own OP Mainnet.

At the same time, the source of money is not in selling copies of the software code. Revenue arises from the functioning ecosystem of networks, their users, and agreements between participants.

Do Token Holders Receive Money?

In the 12 months, Optimism received 5868 ETH. Until recently, all this income went to the treasury managed by the project governance. Holding the OP token did not, in itself, mean that a person received a portion of these ETH.

In January 2026, Optimism governance approved a new mechanism. Over the next 12 months, half of the incoming revenue will be directed to regular buybacks of OP. The program started in February. Purchased tokens go to the treasury, not directly to the wallets of holders.

The connection between network usage and the token has become more direct: more revenue means more funds can be directed to buy OP.

But this is still not dividends. The holder does not gain the right to withdraw a certain share of the revenue. Purchased coins remain under the control of the treasury, and further use is determined by the project governance.

Ethereum operates differently. The more base fees users pay, the more ETH can be burned. This reduces the supply of the coin, but again, the money is not distributed among all its holders. Direct rewards are given to staking participants and validators.

Therefore, the same increase in fees can affect the economics of the two tokens quite differently.

Network, Fund, and Developer - Different Wallets

To evaluate a blockchain project, at least four aspects can be distinguished. The network establishes the rules for processing transactions and distributing fees. Validators or operators ensure the direct operation of the infrastructure and can earn money for this. A fund or development company finances the development or sells individual services. A token holder benefits only if there is a mechanism in the system that links the network's operation to the coin itself.

These roles can overlap, but one does not automatically follow from another. The Ethereum Foundation can fund Ethereum developers without receiving user fees. A validator can earn ETH without any relation to the fund. The company Optimism can sell commercial support for open source. Base can generate its own income while simultaneously giving part of it to Optimism.

What to Look for as an Investor

If an analytical service states that a blockchain received $100 million in fees, it is essential to focus on the amount. Four things should be checked: who paid and for what, where the funds went (to validators, the network operator, the treasury, for token burning), what expenses the recipient incurred, and whether there is a mechanism that links this income to the token: staking, coin destruction, buyback, or other distribution.

Only after this can the fee indicator be used when evaluating a crypto asset. Otherwise, it is easy to compare two networks with the same $100 million in fees and miss the main point: in one, almost the entire amount went to independent validators, in another, part became the operator's profit, and in the third, the income is used to buy back its own token.