Network participants process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Cosmos Hub is an interoperability & security platform for blockchains and applications. Cosmos was founded by Ethan Buchman & Jae Kwon and launched in 2019.

ATOM holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Cosmos’s investors include Paradigm, IOSG Ventures, 1confirmation, etc.

governance

github

twitter

discord

etherscan

website

Blockchains (L1)

Cosmos Hub

# Cosmos Hub Average revenue per user (ARPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) measures the average daily revenue generated per active user on the Cosmos Hub. This metric is calculated by dividing the protocol's daily revenue by the number of daily active users (DAU). The revenue includes both transaction fees paid by users and fees from the AEZ (Atom Economic Zone) where other chains pay for validator security services. The metric helps evaluate the economic efficiency and user monetization of the Cosmos Hub.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation uses several raw blockchain data sources:
- **Cosmos Hub transaction records**: Complete transaction data including fees paid in `uatom`
- **Cosmos Hub message event logs**: Parsed blockchain events including `message` events (for user identification) and `transfer` events (for AEZ Zone fees)
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: CoinGecko price data for USD conversion of ATOM and other AEZ Zone tokens
- **Token metadata**: Decimal precision and symbol information for proper amount normalization
- **Hardcoded token mappings**: Static mapping of AEZ Zone token denominations to CoinGecko identifiers

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Transaction fee collection
- **Purpose**: Captures standard transaction fees paid by users
- **Logic**: Extracts transaction fees from Cosmos Hub transaction records where each transaction includes a `transaction_fee` field denominated in `uatom` (micro-atoms). The amounts are converted from micro-atoms to atoms by dividing by 10^6. All transactions are included regardless of success status.
- **Key fields**: `transaction_fee` (fee amount), `block_timestamp` (transaction timing), `transaction_hash` (unique identifier)

### Component B: AEZ Zone fee collection  
- **Purpose**: Captures fees from other chains using Cosmos Hub validators for security
- **Logic**: Extracts amounts from `transfer` events in message event logs where the recipient address is `cosmos1ap0mh6xzfn8943urr84q6ae7zfnar48am2erhd` (the AEZ Zone recipient). The amount is parsed from JSON event attributes using regex to extract numeric values and token denominations. Uses hardcoded token mappings to identify supported AEZ Zone tokens and their CoinGecko identifiers.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (parsed from event attributes), `recipient` (filtered to specific address), `event_type` (filtered to 'transfer')

### Component C: Fee aggregation and USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Combines all fee sources and converts to USD
- **Logic**: Aggregates transaction fees and AEZ Zone fees by day, joining with token metadata to normalize decimal places, then converts to USD using end-of-day CoinGecko price feeds. Each token type (ATOM and AEZ Zone tokens) is converted separately based on its CoinGecko identifier.
- **Key fields**: `fees` (aggregated daily amounts), `coingecko_id` (for price lookup), `decimals` (for normalization)

### Component D: Supply-side fee calculation
- **Purpose**: Determines the portion of fees paid to validators versus kept by protocol
- **Logic**: Applies date-based percentage splits to total fees. Before December 20, 2022: 98% goes to validators. From December 20, 2022 to May 2, 2025: 90% goes to validators. After May 2, 2025: 98% goes to validators. This reflects governance decisions about community pool taxation rates.
- **Key fields**: `fees_supply_side` (calculated percentage of total fees), `timestamp` (for date-based logic)

### Component E: Revenue calculation
- **Purpose**: Calculates net protocol revenue
- **Logic**: Protocol revenue equals total fees minus supply-side fees. This represents the portion retained by the protocol rather than distributed to validators. Combines positive total fees with negative supply-side fees to get the net revenue figure.
- **Key fields**: `revenue` (total fees minus supply-side fees)

### Component F: Daily active user identification
- **Purpose**: Counts unique users per day
- **Logic**: Extracts unique user addresses from `message` events in Cosmos Hub message event logs. Filters for events with `event_type` = 'message' and extracts the `sender` field from JSON event attributes. Each unique sender address per day represents one daily active user.
- **Key fields**: `user_address` (sender from event attributes), `user_type` ('Transaction sender'), `block_timestamp` (for daily grouping)

### Component G: User aggregation with deduplication
- **Purpose**: Aggregates users across different dimensional breakdowns
- **Logic**: Uses HyperLogLog (HLL) algorithm to count distinct users while supporting multiple dimensional views (by project, chain, user type, product). Creates daily HLL sketches for each dimension combination, then merges and extracts final counts. This ensures accurate deduplication when users appear in multiple categories.
- **Key fields**: `user_dau` (distinct user count), `dimensions` (aggregation level), `hll` (HyperLogLog sketch)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: Revenue and DAU data are combined at the daily level, both aggregated to the same timestamp grain (day) and filtered to the same data identifier ('cosmos')
- **Currency conversion**: All revenue amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day CoinGecko price feeds matched by token's coingecko_id
- **Time aggregation**: Data is truncated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation, with both revenue and user counts aggregated by day
- **Final calculation**: ARPU is calculated by dividing daily revenue (in USD) by daily active user count for each day. Days with zero users or missing data are filled with zero values using a fill_zeros strategy

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

Cosmos HubATOM

Average revenue per user (ARPU)

Average revenue per user (ARPU)

Competitive landscape