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Infrastructure

Virtuals Protocol

# Virtuals Protocol Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

Fees measures the total economic value generated by Virtuals Protocol through agent creation, trading taxes, and liquidity pool activities. These fees are paid by users interacting with AI agents and protocol-managed liquidity pools. Collected fees are distributed between the protocol treasury and supply-side participants, including agent treasuries and liquidity providers.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `NewPersona` events from `AgentFactory` contracts, and ERC-20 asset transfers, covering Base, Ethereum, and Robinhood Chain
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds and asset metadata

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Agent treasury mapping

- **Purpose**: Identify the treasury addresses associated with each AI agent.
- **Logic**: `NewPersona` events from `AgentFactory` contracts are parsed to map each agent asset to its corresponding token-bound account, which serves as the agent's treasury address.
- **Key fields**: `token` and `treasury_address`

### Component B: Direct fee flow tracking

- **Purpose**: Capture direct fee transfers of protocol assets and cbBTC.
- **Logic**: ERC-20 asset transfers of the Virtuals Protocol asset and cbBTC on Base, and the Virtuals Protocol asset on Ethereum, are tracked. On Base, transfers are included if they are sent to the legacy fee receiver, the cbBTC fun prototype fee receiver, the protocol treasury, or any identified agent treasury address. Specific exclusions are applied to prevent double-counting, such as filtering out transfers from tax managers and fee splitters, and restricting cbBTC fun prototype fee receiver transfers to those originating from the designated prototype sender. On Ethereum, transfers of the Virtuals Protocol asset to the designated fee receiver are captured.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `transaction_hash`, `token_address`, `to_address`, and `amount`

### Component C: Fee payout tracking

- **Purpose**: Capture trading-tax and locked-liquidity fees when they are distributed by tax managers or fee splitters.
- **Logic**: ERC-20 asset transfers originating from tax managers and fee splitters are tracked on Base and Robinhood Chain. On Base, payouts of specific assets (such as USDC and cbBTC) from tax managers, as well as all payouts from fee splitters, are captured. On Robinhood Chain, payouts of the USDG asset from the tax manager are captured.
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp`, `transaction_hash`, `token_address`, `to_address`, and `amount`

### Component D: Fee classification

- **Purpose**: Categorize fee flows into protocol revenue and supply-side fees.
- **Logic**: Payouts sent to the protocol treasury are classified as revenue, while all other payouts are classified as supply-side fees. For direct fee flows on Base, transfers of the Virtuals Protocol asset to the legacy fee receiver are classified as revenue if they are associated with specific legacy method calls executed during November and December 2024; all other direct flows are classified as supply-side fees.
- **Key fields**: `to_address`, `token_address`, and `transaction_hash`

### Component E: USD conversion and aggregation

- **Purpose**: Normalize fee values and convert them to USD.
- **Logic**: All captured fee amounts are normalized by decimal precision using asset metadata. The normalized amounts are multiplied by end-of-day asset prices to determine the USD value. Daily values are aggregated by chain and fee type using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `amount` and `price_usd`

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

Total value users pay to use a protocol (gross fees, user-paid fees).

Virtuals ProtocolVIRTUAL

Fees

Fees

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown