Liquidity providers deposit funds into Aperture and receive trading fees from traders (supply-side fees).

Aperture is a non-custodial DeFi exchange protocol built on Manta Pacific (originally a fork of Uniswap). Aperture was founded by Gao Han, Lian Zhu, and Peiqian Li in 2021.

Aperture team & investors own and govern the protocol. They do not currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue). Aperture's investors include ParaFi Capital, Arrington XRP Capital, Costanoa Ventures and Divergence Ventures.

github

twitter

discord

website

Exchanges (DEX)

Aperture

# Aperture Earnings Methodology

## 1. Overview

Aperture earnings represents the net profit generated by the Aperture protocol after accounting for all revenue and expenses. The metric follows the standard formula: earnings = revenue - expenses. However, Aperture operates as a decentralized exchange (DEX) where all trading fees are distributed to liquidity providers rather than retained by the protocol, and the protocol does not run token incentive programs. As a result, both revenue and expenses are consistently zero, leading to zero earnings across all time periods.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on these underlying data sources:
- **Manta blockchain event logs**: Parsed `Pool_Swap_event` logs capturing all trades on Aperture trading pools
- **Flash loan event logs**: Parsed `Pool_Flash_event` logs from Manta blockchain recording flash loan activities
- **Pool creation events**: Parsed `Factory_PoolCreated_event` logs from Manta blockchain identifying trading pairs and fee tier structures
- **Transaction data**: Manta blockchain transaction records providing user address information and transaction context
- **Token metadata**: Token registry containing symbol, decimal precision, and address information for tokens trading on Aperture
- **End-of-day price feeds**: Daily token price data in USD for converting trading volumes to USD values

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Trading pair identification
- **Purpose**: Identify all active trading pools with their associated fee tiers and token pairs
- **Logic**: Extract data from `Factory_PoolCreated_event` logs on the Manta blockchain to identify unique trading pools. Each event contains the pool contract address, paired token addresses (token0 and token1), and the fee tier applied to trades. Fee tiers are converted from raw integer values to decimal percentages by dividing by 10^6. Token metadata is joined to obtain token symbols and decimal precision for proper amount calculations.
- **Key fields**: Pool `account_address`, `token0_address`, `token1_address`, `fee_tier`, token symbols and `decimals`

### Component B: Trading volume calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate daily trading volumes for each pool in USD terms
- **Logic**: Process all `Pool_Swap_event` logs from Manta blockchain, extracting token amounts exchanged in each trade. Raw token amounts are converted to proper decimal representation using token metadata. Daily aggregation is performed by truncating timestamps to day boundaries. For each trade, calculate USD values for both token0 and token1 amounts using end-of-day price feeds. To prevent price manipulation attacks, use the minimum USD value between the two token amounts as the trading volume for each trade. Sum these volumes daily for each trading pool.
- **Key fields**: Daily aggregated `trading_volume` in USD, `token0_amount`, `token1_amount`, daily `timestamp`

### Component C: Flash loan volume calculation  
- **Purpose**: Calculate daily flash loan volumes for each pool in USD terms
- **Logic**: Process all `Pool_Flash_event` logs from Manta blockchain, extracting the amounts of tokens borrowed in flash loans. Convert raw token amounts to proper decimals and aggregate daily by truncating timestamps. Unlike trading volume, flash loan volume sums both token amounts in USD (rather than taking the minimum) since flash loans represent temporary borrowing of liquidity. Convert both token amounts to USD using end-of-day price feeds and sum them for total flash loan volume per pool per day.
- **Key fields**: Daily aggregated `flash_loan_volume` in USD, combined token amounts from flash loan events

### Component D: Fee calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate total fees generated by the protocol from trading and flash loan activities
- **Logic**: For each pool and day, multiply the trading volume by the pool's fee tier to get trading fees. Similarly, multiply flash loan volume by the fee tier to get flash loan fees. Sum these two fee components to get total daily fees per pool. Aggregate across all pools to get protocol-wide daily fees. These fees represent the total value captured by the protocol's fee mechanism.
- **Key fields**: Daily `fees` calculated as (trading_volume + flash_loan_volume) × fee_tier

### Component E: Revenue determination
- **Purpose**: Determine protocol revenue from fee-generating activities
- **Logic**: Aperture operates as a fully decentralized exchange where all trading fees are distributed directly to liquidity providers who provide capital to trading pools. The protocol itself does not retain any portion of the fees generated. Therefore, protocol revenue is set to zero for all time periods and chains, regardless of the total fees generated by trading activities.
- **Key fields**: `revenue` set to 0 for all timestamps and chains

### Component F: Expenses calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculate total protocol expenses including token incentives and operational costs
- **Logic**: Aperture does not operate token incentive programs or other expense-generating activities. Token incentives are set to zero for all time periods. Since token incentives represent the primary expense category for most DeFi protocols, and Aperture has no such programs, total expenses are zero.
- **Key fields**: `expenses` derived from `token_incentives`, both set to 0

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Earnings are calculated using the standard formula: earnings = revenue - expenses
- **Currency conversion**: All amounts are already converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds during volume calculations
- **Time aggregation**: Data is aggregated on daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to day level
- **Final calculation**: Since both revenue (0) and expenses (0) are zero, the final earnings metric is consistently zero across all time periods and chains where Aperture operates

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Net profit (also profits, net income, profitability) — revenue remaining after subtracting expenses.

Aperture

Earnings

Earnings

Competitive landscape