Liquidity providers deposit funds into Clipper and receive returns generated by Clipper’s costless diversified rebalancing liquidity pools (supply-side fees). LP yields are generated from the rebalancing process itself rather than from fees charged to traders.

Clipper is a non-custodial exchange protocol built on Ethereum. Clipper was built by Shipyard Software and launched in 2021.

AdmiralDAO and SAIL token holders own and govern the protocol. They currently receive all trading fees paid by traders (revenue). Clipper's investors include Polychain, Robot Ventures, 0x Labs, etc.

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Clipper

# Clipper Earnings Methodology

## 1. Overview

Clipper earnings represents the net income generated by the Clipper DEX protocol, calculated as total protocol revenue minus operating expenses. This metric measures the protocol's profitability by capturing the portion of trading fees retained by the protocol after accounting for any token incentive expenses. The calculation uses a time-dependent revenue model where protocol fee collection rules changed in August 2023, while expenses are currently zero as the protocol does not distribute token incentives.

## 2. Data sources

The earnings calculation relies on the following raw data sources:
- **The Graph protocol subgraphs**: Parsed swap events from Clipper DEX contracts on Ethereum and Polygon, including transaction details, token addresses, and swap amounts
- **Clipper internal scraper API**: Pre-processed swap transaction data across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum chains with USD-denominated amounts
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: Price data for converting token amounts to USD values
- **Token metadata**: Decimal precision and symbol information for proper token amount normalization
- **Blockchain transaction data**: Transaction timestamps and block information for daily aggregation

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: The graph fee collection
- **Purpose**: Extracts trading fees from Clipper swap events on Ethereum and Polygon using The Graph subgraphs
- **Logic**: Processes `ExchangeInterfaceV1SwappedV1Event` events from Ethereum and `DirectExchangeV1SwappedV1Event` events from Polygon. For each swap event, applies a fixed 0.2% fee rate to the `outAmount` to calculate the trading fee. Handles native token representation by converting null addresses to wrapped native token addresses (WETH on Ethereum, WMATIC on Polygon). Each fee record includes transaction details, token address, and the calculated fee amount.
- **Key fields**: `blockTimestamp` for timing, `transactionHash` and `logIndex` for uniqueness, `outAsset` and `outAmount` for fee calculation, with business classification fields

### Component B: Clipper scraper fee collection  
- **Purpose**: Captures trading fees from Clipper's internal API data across multiple chains
- **Logic**: Processes swap data from Clipper's scraper across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum. Calculates fees as the positive difference between `amountInUsd` and `amountOutUsd`, representing the spread captured by the protocol. Filters out transactions involving CLP tokens to exclude internal protocol operations. When the USD input amount exceeds the USD output amount, the difference represents the trading fee collected by the protocol.
- **Key fields**: `amountInUsd` and `amountOutUsd` for fee calculation, `timestamp` for daily grouping, `inTokenSymbol` and `outTokenSymbol` for filtering

### Component C: Fee aggregation and standardization
- **Purpose**: Combines both fee collection sources and standardizes the data for metric calculation
- **Logic**: Merges The Graph-derived fees (after USD conversion and decimal correction) with scraper-derived fees. Aggregates all fees daily by chain, applying business line classifications ("Exchange AMM", "exchanges", "dex"). The Graph data undergoes token decimal correction and USD conversion using end-of-day price feeds, while scraper data is already in USD. All fee amounts are summed by day and chain to create the total daily fee pool.
- **Key fields**: Daily aggregated `fees` amounts, `chain_id` for segmentation, standardized business classification fields

### Component D: Revenue calculation with time-dependent protocol fees
- **Purpose**: Calculates protocol revenue based on time-dependent fee collection rules
- **Logic**: Applies different protocol fee rates based on timestamp and chain. From July 9, 2022 to August 1, 2023, protocol revenue equals 50% of Ethereum fees only. From August 1, 2023 onward, protocol revenue equals 100% of Ethereum fees. All other chains (Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum) generate zero protocol revenue regardless of time period. This reflects Clipper's fee collection strategy where only Ethereum fees contribute to protocol revenue.
- **Key fields**: Time-filtered `fees` from Ethereum chain, with percentage multipliers based on date ranges

### Component E: Expenses calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculates total protocol expenses, currently consisting only of token incentives
- **Logic**: Sets token incentives to zero across all chains and time periods, as Clipper does not currently operate a token incentive program. This creates a baseline expenses metric that can be expanded if the protocol introduces liquidity mining or other incentive programs in the future.
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` set to zero, maintaining the same time and chain structure as revenue

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Revenue and expenses are combined using the earnings calculation macro, which performs a simple subtraction: earnings = revenue - expenses
- **Currency conversion**: All monetary values are denominated in USD, with The Graph data converted using end-of-day price feeds and scraper data already in USD format
- **Time aggregation**: Daily aggregation boundaries use UTC timestamps truncated to day level, with forward-filling applied to ensure complete time series
- **Final calculation**: Daily earnings equals daily protocol revenue (time and chain-dependent fees) minus daily expenses (currently zero), resulting in earnings that match revenue amounts for Ethereum and zero for other chains

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

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

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