Users deposit ETH or liquid staking tokens (stETH, ETHx, etc.) into Kelp and receive rsETH, a liquid restaking token. The deposited assets are delegated to EigenLayer operators to earn restaking rewards on top of base staking yields.

Kelp DAO is a liquid restaking protocol built on Ethereum and EigenLayer. It enables users to restake their ETH and liquid staking tokens while maintaining liquidity through the rsETH derivative token. Kelp was launched in December 2023.

Kelp DAO (part of KernelDAO) develops and governs the protocol. The protocol charges a 3.5% fee on staking rewards (revenue), as set by protocolFeeInBPS in the LRTConfig contract. Kelp DAO's $9M private sale was co-led by SCB Limited and Laser Digital, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Cypher Capital, GSR, and others.

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Kelp DAO

# Kelp DAO Revenue Methodology

## 1. Overview

Revenue measures the portion of fees and staking rewards retained by Kelp DAO. This includes a protocol take rate applied to ETH staking yield, management fees collected from agETH and hgETH vaults, and performance fees derived from hgETH vault appreciation. Revenue is also tracked for EIGEN token reward distributions, though the protocol take rate for these rewards is currently set to zero. These earnings represent the protocol's gross income before operating expenses and token incentives.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `Claimed` events from `EigenRewardDistributor` contracts and ERC-20 `Transfer` events for vault fee collections, covering Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Blast, and 4 other chains
- **On-chain state**: `rsETH` oracle exchange rates, `hgETH` exchange rates and total supply, `rsETH` total supply per chain, and `protocolFeeInBPS` values from `LRTConfig` contracts
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for ETH, EIGEN, and rsETH assets

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: ETH staking reward revenue

- **Purpose**: Captures the protocol's share of staking yield generated by rsETH.
- **Logic**: Daily changes in the rsETH/ETH oracle rate are tracked to determine the gross staking yield generated across all chains. The protocol revenue is calculated by applying a fee percentage to this yield. This fee percentage is retrieved from the `protocolFeeInBPS` value within `LRTConfig` contracts or defaults to 3.5% for periods prior to the on-chain availability of the fee parameter.
- **Key fields**: `rseth_eth_rate`, `protocolFeeInBPS`, `rseth_supply`

### Component B: Vault management fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Captures fixed management fees from agETH and hgETH vaults.
- **Logic**: ERC-20 `Transfer` events of rsETH are monitored from vault-specific source addresses to designated fee collector wallets. These transfers represent the 2% annual management fee for agETH and the 1.5% annual management fee for hgETH. These collected fees are classified as 100% protocol revenue.
- **Key fields**: `from_address`, `to_address`, `value`, `token_address`

### Component C: hgETH performance fee calculation

- **Purpose**: Calculates revenue earned from the performance of the hgETH vault.
- **Logic**: Positive daily deltas in the hgETH exchange rate are identified using on-chain state updates. A 20% performance fee is applied to the daily growth in value, provided the total value locked in the hgETH vault exceeds a $50 million threshold. The fee is calculated by multiplying the positive rate delta by the total supply of hgETH shares.
- **Key fields**: `hgeth_rate`, `total_supply`, `performance_fee_rate`

### Component D: EIGEN reward fee tracking

- **Purpose**: Captures potential revenue from EIGEN token reward distributions.
- **Logic**: `Claimed` events from `EigenRewardDistributor` contracts are parsed to identify the gross amount of EIGEN tokens claimed by users. A protocol take rate (currently 0%) is applied to the total claimed amount. Although the current take rate results in zero revenue for this stream, the logic is maintained to capture revenue should the fee switch be activated.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (gross claim), `feeInBPS`

### Component E: USD conversion and aggregation

- **Purpose**: Normalizes all revenue components into a single USD-denominated metric.
- **Logic**: All identified fee and reward amounts are normalized by their respective decimal precision. These values are multiplied by the end-of-day asset prices for ETH, EIGEN, and rsETH. Daily revenue is then aggregated across all components and chains using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `price_usd`, `block_timestamp`

*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.

Kelp DAO

Revenue

Revenue

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown