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 Revenue Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Clipper revenue metric measures the protocol's earnings from trading fees collected on its decentralized exchange. Revenue is calculated by applying protocol fee percentages to the total fees generated from swaps across supported chains. The calculation uses a hybrid approach combining subgraph data and proprietary API data to capture fees, then applies time-based protocol fee logic where Clipper's revenue share changed from 50% to 100% of Ethereum fees on August 1, 2023.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several key data sources:
- **Blockchain events**: Parsed `SwappedV1` events from TheGraph subgraphs for Ethereum and Polygon Clipper contracts
- **API data**: Clipper's proprietary scraper data capturing swap transactions across Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum
- **Price feeds**: End-of-day token price feeds for USD conversion
- **Token metadata**: Token decimal information for proper amount normalization
- **Chain data**: Chain availability information for filtering active periods

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Subgraph fee collection
- **Purpose**: Extract fees from on-chain swap events using TheGraph subgraphs
- **Logic**: Query `ExchangeInterfaceV1SwappedV1Event` events from Ethereum and `DirectExchangeV1SwappedV1Event` events from Polygon. Apply a hardcoded fee rate of 0.2% to the `outAmount` field from each swap event. Handle native token addresses by converting null addresses to wrapped token addresses (ETH to WETH at `0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2`, MATIC to WMATIC at `0x0d500b1d8e8ef31e21c99d1db9a6444d3adf1270`). Extract transaction metadata including `blockTimestamp`, `transactionHash`, and `logIndex`
- **Key fields**: `outAsset` (token address), `outAmount` (swap amount), calculated `token_amount` as fee

### Component B: API scraper fee collection  
- **Purpose**: Calculate spread-based fees from Clipper's proprietary trading data
- **Logic**: Query swap data from Clipper's internal scraper covering Ethereum, Polygon, Optimism, and Arbitrum chains. Calculate fees as the difference between input USD value and output USD value (`amountInUsd` minus `amountOutUsd`). Only include positive spread values as fees, setting negative spreads to zero. Exclude any swaps involving CLP tokens (filter out transactions where `inTokenSymbol` or `outTokenSymbol` contains 'CLP'). Extract swap identifiers and timestamps for aggregation
- **Key fields**: `amountInUsd` and `amountOutUsd` for spread calculation, `inTokenSymbol` and `outTokenSymbol` for filtering

### Component C: Fee aggregation and normalization
- **Purpose**: Combine both fee sources and standardize the data
- **Logic**: Union the subgraph-derived fees and API scraper fees into a single dataset. For subgraph data, correct token decimal places and convert token amounts to USD using end-of-day price feeds. For API data, fees are already in USD format. Aggregate all fees by day, chain, and other dimensional attributes. Sum fees across all sources to get total daily fees per chain
- **Key fields**: `fees` (aggregated daily fee amounts in USD), `chain` (blockchain identifier), `timestamp` (daily aggregation boundary)

### Final aggregation: Protocol revenue calculation
- **Combining components**: Take the aggregated daily fees from Component C and apply protocol-specific revenue logic based on time periods and chains
- **Currency conversion**: All amounts are already in USD from the fee aggregation step using end-of-day price feeds
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are maintained throughout the calculation, with timestamps truncated to day level
- **Final calculation**: Apply protocol fee percentages based on date and chain rules. For dates from July 9, 2022 to July 31, 2023, multiply Ethereum fees by 0.5 (50% protocol fee). For dates from August 1, 2023 onward, take 100% of Ethereum fees as protocol revenue. All other chains (Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum) generate zero protocol revenue throughout all time periods. The final revenue value represents Clipper's daily earnings from trading fees

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

fees * take_rate (illustrative — revenue is observed directly per project, not derived from take_rate)

Fee revenue retained after supply-side payouts. Before cost of revenue (e.g. L2 DA fees) and before operating expenses.

ClipperSAIL

Revenue

Revenue

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown