Business Model
This section describes the business model.
Aporia's business model is designed around a single, durable revenue mechanism — transaction fees on trading volume — supplemented by complementary revenue streams that scale with platform adoption.
Aporia's primary revenue source is taker fees on all executed trades. The fee structure is deliberately set at the competitive margin — low enough to attract institutional volume, structured to incentivize professional market making at scale.
Fee Structure
The maker-taker fee model operates as follows:
Maker fee: 0.00% — market makers who add resting liquidity to the order book pay no trading fee.
Taker fee: 0.02% — participants who remove liquidity from the order book pay a flat taker fee on all executed volume.
Institutional tier: custom fee arrangements available to market makers executing above defined volume thresholds, negotiated bilaterally and structured as rebate adjustments within the 0.02% taker fee framework.
The 0.00% maker / 0.02% taker structure positions Aporia in the same competitive tier as Hyperliquid (0.00% / 0.025%) and leading CEX maker-taker schedules. For a platform bootstrapping liquidity, zero maker fees are the clearest possible signal to professional liquidity providers that Aporia is competing for their order flow.
Taker Fee Distribution
Every taker fee collected is distributed across three destinations in fixed proportions:
70%
Maker Rebates
Returned to liquidity providers
20%
Development
Protocol & infrastructure
10%
Token Buyback
Market support & buyback
Taker fee distribution — 70% maker rebates / 20% protocol development / 10% token buyback
The 70% maker rebate allocation is the engine of the liquidity flywheel: the more taker volume the platform generates, the more market makers are compensated for providing the liquidity that makes that volume possible. The fee structure is self-reinforcing: higher volume → higher rebates → more market maker participation → tighter spreads → more volume.
Revenue Streams
Trading fees are the primary revenue source, but Aporia operates three complementary streams that provide recurring income independent of short-term trading volume:
Taker fees
0.02%
Applied to all taker-side executions across spot and perpetual markets; primary volume-driven revenue
Maker rebates
0.00% net
Funded entirely from the 70% taker fee allocation; zero cost to market makers reinforces liquidity attraction
Listing fees
$5K – $15K
One-time fee for new token and instrument listings; tiered by project size, existing trading volume, and liquidity commitment
Premium Pro
$50 / month
Subscription tier for advanced order types, priority API routing, institutional analytics, and co-location advisory
Token buyback
10% of taker fees
Allocated to protocol-controlled buyback programme; provides secondary market support and reduces circulating supply over time
Volume economics: At $100M daily trading volume — a realistic medium-term target for a primary liquidity venue in the Kaspa ecosystem — taker fees generate approximately $20,000 per day ($7.3M annualised) in gross revenue before rebates. Of this, $14,000/day flows back to market makers as rebates, $4,000/day funds protocol development, and $2,000/day goes to the token buyback programme. The protocol's net retained revenue scales linearly with volume.
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