Take Rate
The share of the fees users pay that the protocol keeps for itself, expressed as a percentage.
Take rate is protocol revenue divided by total fees, a ratio borrowed from marketplace businesses where it describes the commission a platform charges on transactions it facilitates. A low take rate means nearly all fees flow to suppliers, which usually reflects competition for liquidity rather than generosity. Raising it is a governance decision with direct competitive consequences, because open-source code can be forked and suppliers can move to a venue that keeps less. Comparisons require matching periods and consistent currency conversion, since fees are collected in a mix of assets.
In practice
A protocol whose contracts pass all swap fees to liquidity providers has a take rate of zero even while users pay substantial fees.
The common misunderstanding
A higher take rate is not simply better economics; it comes directly out of what suppliers earn, and those suppliers can move their capital to a competing venue.
The figure this maps to
The share of total user fees the protocol keeps instead of paying out to liquidity providers or validators.
Limits: In most cases this is a governance parameter rather than an outcome, so it reveals a design choice and not operating efficiency. It reads near zero for blockchains that pass all gas to validators and near one hundred percent for protocols with no supply side, and neither reading is comparable to…