# CoW Protocol Revenue Methodology

## 1. Overview

Revenue measures the portion of fees retained by CoW Protocol. It represents the DAO's share of protocol income derived from trade-level fees, partner revenue sharing, RPC rebates, and MEV-related activities. This metric reflects the protocol's earnings before operating expenses and token incentives. **Known data gaps**: Jan–Sep 2024 protocol fee revenue is zero due to API unavailability for this period. Specific order gaps exist for Ethereum (Jul–Sep 2024) and Gnosis (Jul–Oct 2024) where orders are unavailable on the CoW Protocol API.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `bill` function calls from `MevBlockerFeeTill` contracts, native token transfers from distributor and solver payout contracts, covering Ethereum, Gnosis, Arbitrum, Base, and 5 other chains
- **External data**: Trade-level fee data from CoW Protocol API and end-of-day price feeds for assets

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Trade-level fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Captures the protocol's share of fees collected directly from user trades
- **Logic**: Trade-level data is parsed from the CoW Protocol API to extract the `executed_protocol_fees` array. Fees classified as surplus or price improvement are fully retained by the protocol. Volume-based fees are included only when the fee rate matches standard protocol tiers of 0.3 bps or 2 bps; volume fees at other rates are excluded as they are designated for partners.
- **Key fields**: `executed_protocol_fees`, `fee_type`, `fee_factor_bps`

### Component B: Partner fee distribution tracking

- **Purpose**: Captures the protocol's cut from partner revenue-sharing agreements
- **Logic**: Weekly native token distributions are tracked from distributor contracts. The protocol's share is identified by detecting consecutive transfers to the same DAO safe address within the same transaction. The second transfer in such a sequence is classified as the protocol's cut of the distributed fees.
- **Key fields**: `account_address`, `value`, `trace_address`

### Component C: RPC rebate and MEV fee collection

- **Purpose**: Captures income from solver rebates and MEV-related mechanisms
- **Logic**: RPC rebates are captured as native inflows to the solver payout address on Ethereum. MEV blocker fees are extracted from `bill` function calls on Ethereum for fees accrued prior to November 2025. One-off MEV Blocker asset sale proceeds are also included. A 50% retention rate is applied to both MEV blocker fees and MEV Blocker asset sale, while RPC rebates are 100% retained.
- **Key fields**: `due_value`, `amount`, `token_address`

### Component D: USD conversion and aggregation

- **Purpose**: Normalize all revenue streams into a single USD-denominated metric
- **Logic**: All fee amounts are normalized by decimal precision. Values are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds. Daily totals are aggregated across all revenue streams and chains. Daily granularity is maintained with UTC day boundaries.

*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.

Revenue

CoW Protocol

CoW Protocol batches trades and auctions them between public and private liquidity sources. It aims to achieve better prices than other exchanges by matching trades via Coincidences of Wants (CoWs) and protecting from MEV.

CoW Protocol is a meta-DEX aggregation protocol that acts as a batch settlement layer on top of all other AMMs & DEX aggregators. CoW Protocol is a spin off from Gnosis DAO that launched in February 2021.

COW tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total trading fees paid by traders (revenue).

CoW ProtocolCOW

Revenue

Revenue

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown