Since mid-April of this year, the token $CARDS of the Solana-based TCG card market/drawing platform Collector Cards has surged by over 5 times at its peak. Currently, $CARDS 's circulating market cap is about $60 million, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $468 million.

In a year when the cryptocurrency market lacks narratives and sentiment is sluggish, such market performance is undoubtedly very impressive. Let's first analyze why Collector Cards has been able to defy the trend and achieve a strong market performance, then take a broad look at the current on-chain TCG card track.

Reasons for Collector Cards' Rise: Truly Profitable

Perhaps what everyone hasn't expected is that Collector Cards is now almost the second most profitable dApp on Solana, second only to pump.fun.

According to data from defillama, whether over the past 7 days or 30 days, Collector Cards' revenue has consistently ranked second among Solana dApps. In the past 7 days, its revenue was $3.86 million, and over the past 30 days, it reached $9.48 million.

Such revenue figures surpass many well-known Solana dApps like Axiom, Phantom Wallet, Jupiter, Meteora, and others.

Moreover, these revenue figures are quite competitive even in the entire crypto space. Over the past 7 days, Collector Cards ranked 7th among crypto projects in revenue, and over 30 days, it ranked 10th. Excluding stablecoin projects like Tether and Circle, and projects like Polymarket, Collector Cards is almost second only to Hyperliquid and pump.fun as a native crypto "money printer."

The revenue composition of Collector Cards is simple: part of it comes from card drawing, and another part from transaction fees in the card trading marketplace. These two sources of income are very uneven. For example, in May, the total transaction volume of card packs was about $194.7 million, while the total trading volume of the card marketplace was only about $2,050.

Although the sales of card packs are very hot, this is a "gambling-style gacha machine." Many players, after opening packs and finding the cards they drew are worthless, will immediately sell them back to the platform at a discount. The buyback price ratio varies between different packs; generally, for packs that are cheap and high-volume, such as $25/$50 per draw, the platform buys back at 85% of the price. For packs costing $2,500 per draw, the buyback can be at 93%.

While the total transaction volume of card draws is large, many players will quickly resell common, worthless cards back to the platform after drawing them. Overall, the remaining profit reflects the data level we showed at the beginning of this section.

A question might be: are there really so many people engaging in this kind of soft gambling on-chain?

Let's not jump to conclusions. Looking at the data: so far, 23,733 unique users have participated in card drawing on Collector Cards, with an average expenditure of $26,843.71 per wallet. The total number of draws exceeds 4.87 million, with each independent user drawing over 205 cards on average.

Nearly 60% of users spent over $250 on card draws, and 109 users have drawn over $1 million each.

This data is impressive, but we must also consider that the accumulated points players earn from participating in draws are a core indicator of how much $CARDS tokens they can receive in quarterly airdrops. The official has explicitly stated that each new quarter's points are more important than the total accumulated points:

So far, $CARDS has completed three quarterly airdrops, each distributing a total of 0.75% of the tokens to platform users. This is similar to the era when NFTs were popular, and many people traded to earn Blur points, even at the cost of wear and tear.

Therefore, Collector Cards' profitability is real, but this level of income is definitely amplified by the potential token airdrop rewards. And this amplification is not a negative or long-term bearish signal; rather, it affirms the success of its flywheel.

With this kind of successful token incentive, Collector Cards has already overtaken the former king in the same track, Polygon's Courtyard. Its market share in card drawing remains above 50%, even reaching 83.6% in the past week:

From the revenue perspective, Courtyard earned $1.14 million in the past 7 days and $6.99 million over the past 30 days. Since Courtyard has not issued tokens nor provided token incentives, its revenue data actually proves that on-chain card drawing demand is real. The competitive advantage amplified by tokens, if paced well and sustained over time, can also help with long-term user retention.

Returning to the discussion of $CARDS 's strong price performance: besides its profitability, it is currently the only project in the same track with a token that can be invested in. Collector Cards' total transaction volume has exceeded $1 billion, while other projects in the same track, like Courtyard, have surpassed $1.1 billion; Phygitals over $336 million; and Beeize on Base has exceeded $100 million in just four months.

The Pokémon card market is truly huge, enough to support the scale of these on-chain drawing platforms. Over the past year, according to pokeca-soken data, the market price of individual Pokémon cards has shown a continuous upward trend.

As of March 2025, the total production of Pokémon cards has exceeded 75 billion cards, sold in over 90 countries worldwide. Its sales revenue for fiscal years 2024-2025 reached 4.109 trillion yen, a 38.1% increase year-over-year. Its digital product Pokémon TCG Pocket even broke $1.3 billion in revenue in its first year after launch.

Especially after the launch of the "Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket Version" in fall 2024, demand for physical cards surged, leading to widespread shortages and scalping. The Pokémon company is building a new printing factory covering 1.27 million square feet, expected to be operational by the end of 2028.

In February 2026, famous YouTuber and WWE star Logan Paul, who privately purchased a PSA GEM MT 10 perfect condition Pokémon card for about $205k in 2021, auctioned it at Goldin Auctions for about $16.5 million.

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On-chain card drawing eliminates the need to buy packs offline personally. If you draw unwanted common cards, you can immediately resell them to the platform; if you get desired cards, you can claim physical cards from these platforms. This indeed makes life much easier for loyal Pokémon card players. Viewing these platforms solely as gambling overlooks the huge young market size and demand for Pokémon cards.

Additionally, $CARDS 's buyback program is already underway. However, the project team has stated they will wait for the CLARITY legislation to be enacted before disclosing further details.

Other Types of TCG Projects

Analyzing $CARDS, we see that card drawing is currently the most profitable business in the on-chain TCG card market. But this is not the only approach; there are other directions.

Card Fragmentation

This approach differs from previous NFT fragmentation that mainly targeted on-chain DeFi or speculative logic. Essentially, rare and expensive cards are indeed difficult to collect and invest in, and have long-term, tangible market demand and price support. But this also means the demand won't be as large as drawing packs; it targets more hardcore players and investors who prefer investing in rare cards for excess returns rather than relying on luck.

Recently, projects like Grail on Base and $SV151 launched by Sunrise and Meteora on Solana have attracted attention. Since May 5, the Cristiano Ronaldo token on Grail once surged nearly 100x, and the Mbappé token even rose nearly 300x.

$SV151 chose to tokenize the exclusive SV151 set containing the original 151 Pokémon, with a market cap once surpassing $3 million.

But the biggest problem with these projects is the limited narrative imagination space. Their token market cap is closely tied to the actual card storage value, making it hard to convince on-chain players to speculate for high premiums. Both Grail's various fragmented card tokens and $SV151 face rapid price drops after initial hype, aligning with the actual card prices. For example, $SV151 has announced it purchased about $185k worth of related card assets, but its current market cap is around $600k—already several times the value of the underlying assets.

Card Lottery

If drawing cards is seen as a form of gambling, then these tokens are essentially layered gambling on top.

Projects like $GACHA are typical, where transaction fees are used to draw cards, and every hour, a lucky holder wins all cards drawn during that period, or players can deposit USD via credit card to buy packs, with the pool awarded proportionally based on each player's contribution.

Meme Collection

This type of project mainly falls into two categories.

One, exemplified by $PIKA , involves opening Pikachu-themed card packs on various chain platforms, accumulating related Pikachu cards and collectibles worth $85k, giving a "Pikachu cultural fund" vibe.

The other, also exemplified by $KABUTO , originated from a collector who in late last year aggressively bought first-edition Kabuto (a fossil Pokémon) cards, leading to a meme coin where all creator fees are used to buy more Kabuto cards.

Card Perpetual Contracts

This direction saw setbacks earlier this year after Trove's rug pull, which shook on-chain players' confidence. But some small projects are still working, like $POKE on Solana.

Overall, aside from drawing packs, most other on-chain TCG projects have seen little progress. But if the profitability of on-chain TCGs as a narrative gains more recognition in the future, these other directions might still present new opportunities.

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