Protocol Valuation Multiples

About This Dashboard

Traditional finance investors evaluate companies using valuation multiples like P/E (Price-to-Earnings) and P/S (Price-to-Sales). This dashboard applies the same framework to DeFi protocols that generate revenue. Lower multiples suggest the protocol is cheaper relative to its earnings power; higher multiples imply the market is pricing in faster growth.

Key Metrics

• Price-to-Fees (P/F): Market Cap / Annualised Total Fees. Analogous to P/E — how many years of current fees it would take to equal the market cap. Lower = cheaper.
• Price-to-Revenue (P/S): Market Cap / Annualised Protocol Revenue. Revenue is the portion of fees retained by the protocol (or accruing to token holders). This is the stricter metric.
• Fee Yield: Annualised Fees / TVL. How much fee income each dollar of locked capital is generating — analogous to Return on Assets.
• TVL-to-Revenue: How much locked capital is needed to generate each dollar of revenue. Lower = more capital-efficient.

Differences from Equity Valuation

• Fees ≠ Revenue: In DeFi, total fees go to liquidity providers and the protocol. Only "protocol revenue" accrues to token holders (like net income to shareholders). Always compare P/S when available.
• Fully Diluted vs Circulating: Market caps here use circulating supply from CoinGecko. Fully diluted valuations may be significantly higher.
• Token ≠ Equity: Many governance tokens do not entitle holders to protocol revenue. Evaluate tokenomics before treating P/F as a buy signal.

Related Tools

• Stablecoin Yield Screener — Find the best yields across lending protocols
• Risk-Adjusted Returns — Compare crypto vs TradFi risk metrics
• TVL vs Traditional Finance — Context for DeFi scale
• Protocol Economics Guide — Deep dive into how protocols generate revenue

Data sources: DefiLlama (fees, revenue, TVL) and CoinGecko (market cap).