Author: StarPlatinum
Good Uncle, Jinse Finance
The crypto industry spent years creating tokens with no connection to the underlying business. Protocols earned $100 million, and token holders received governance rights—“Amazing tech geeks, I have a vote” (sorry, that sounds incredibly dull).
Fortunately, this model is changing.
An increasing number of protocols are using real revenue to buy back their own tokens on the market. There is a fundamental difference between a protocol spending $10 million to purchase and burn its own tokens, and merely announcing a potential buyback proposal that depends on future governance approval.
As "revenue" has reemerged as one of the biggest narratives in the crypto industry, I’ve been examining projects where the链条 of "product usage → revenue → token demand" is truly coming together. Here are 12 that I believe are worth understanding.
1. $HYPE Hyperliquid
Probably the most obvious one.
Hyperliquid has become one of the largest on-chain perpetual futures exchanges, establishing a straightforward relationship between "Someone's Trading Here" and HYPE.
A transaction incurs a fee.
Approximately 99% of the fees are used by the Assistance Fund to buy HYPE, and the acquired tokens are removed from circulation according to the current mechanism.
This is essentially the ideal form of a token model.
Someone trades BTC, ETH, or an obscure perpetual contract at 3 a.m., and Hyperliquid profits from it—much of that revenue ultimately fuels demand for HYPE.
For me, the key metrics are Hyperliquid's trading volume and revenue.
If this exchange continues to gain significant market share, the buyer behind HYPE will maintain ample resources. If trading activity shrinks dramatically, so too will those resources.
That's it.
2. $PUMP PumpFun
PumpFun is a more "dirty" version of the same logic.
Its business relies on people continuously issuing and trading meme coins, making its revenue highly sensitive to attention cycles.
But when the hype is high, Pump can earn absurd amounts of money.
A portion of the revenue is used to purchase PUMP on the open market, with data from certain periods showing cumulative purchases reaching nine figures.
Every meme coin posted by a teenager with an animal picture could indirectly become buying pressure for the platform's token.
Here, I’ll be monitoring: How much of the PUMP supply has actually been removed from circulation.
Buying tokens into the treasury and permanently burning them are two entirely different economic events.
Moreover, Pump must also contend with a far greater adversary than any competitor: people will eventually grow tired of spamming coins on the platform.
3. $RAY Raydium
RAY is probably the least exciting name on this list.
And that’s precisely what I find interesting about it.
Raydium has existed for years, weathered multiple Solana cycles, and supports the transaction infrastructure that countless users rely on without even thinking about it.
Historically, a portion of the protocol's trading fees was used to buy and burn RAY.
So when Solana activities surge, Raydium benefits not just as a DEX—its token launches, swaps, and LaunchLab initiatives also fuel the economic ecosystem surrounding RAY.
We recently saw another example: StonkFun integrated with Raydium LaunchLab.
STONK takes the attention, new tokens take the speculative interest.
4. $AAVE Aave
Aave earns money through its lending and borrowing market.
Then, the DAO uses a portion of the protocol's revenue to buy AAVE on the market.
The initial plan was set at $50 million per year; however, given changes in revenue conditions, the scale has been reconsidered for 2026 and is now proposed to be reduced to approximately $30 million.
There is a significant difference here compared to HYPE or the classic "buy and burn":
The AAVE purchased by the DAO enters the Ecosystem Reserve.
In other words, the DAO is accumulating its own assets, and these tokens can ultimately be used for incentives, staking, grants, or other purposes.
I actually appreciate this distinction because it forces you to look at the entire balance sheet, rather than immediately going long just because you see the words "buyback."
5. $SKY Sky
It's the protocol formerly known as MakerDAO.
USDS, collateralized lending, treasury assets, and the broader Sky ecosystem will generate surpluses.
A portion of the surplus can then be allocated to purchase SKY, and its token allocation system allows tokens to be removed from circulation.
This makes SKY's revenue sources entirely different from those of PUMP and similar projects.
Pump requires meme coin activities.
Sky needs its own balance sheet and a stablecoin system that consistently generates surplus.
6. $RLB Rollbit
RLB might be the strangest business on this list.
Rollbit combines cryptocurrency trading, gambling, and other speculative products, and historically has used a portion of the profits from these activities to buy back and burn RLB tokens.
Its behavior is almost like that of a private internet company buying back its own shares.
When users lose money on trades or gambling, Rollbit earns revenue, a portion of which is used to buy back RLB, which is then burned.
There are several obvious reasons why I’m applying a higher risk discount here than for Aave or Raydium: high business concentration, significant regulatory exposure, and lower transparency in parts of the underlying cash flow.
7. $SYRUP Maple Finance
What makes Maple interesting is that it has consistently broken away from the old norms of the crypto industry.
The old playbook basically goes like this: mint tokens → distribute the tokens to stakers → call it “yield.”
Maple approved a shift: using protocol revenue to buy SYRUP.
8. $ETHFI EtherFi
EtherFi's buyback system does not focus on permanently burning ETHFI, but rather directs value toward those who actively participate in the token economy.
A portion of the eETH redemption fee revenue is used to purchase ETHFI weekly, and additional monthly purchases are supported by a portion of the revenue from various products within the Ether.fi ecosystem.
The purchased ETHFI is primarily allocated to sETHFI holders.
So this appears more like a dividend paid in tokens.
EtherFi generates earnings; those who buy and lock up ETHFI receive a portion of its value.
Of course, these tokens still exist, and recipients can eventually sell them.
But this raises an interesting question for every repurchase model: Would you rather permanently destroy the asset, or use the proceeds to make "holding and locking it" economically viable?
9. $ENA Ethena
ENA may have the most promising buyback mechanism on this list.
And the words “potential” carry significant weight here.
Ethena has discussed a framework: once USDe reaches the required milestones, a very high percentage of the protocol's net income—up to 95% under the proposed structure—could ultimately be used to buy ENA.
If this mechanism is fully scaled up, the numbers could be enormous.
USDe is a genuine financial product whose income comes from its collateral, hedging structure, and broader ecosystem.
But Ethena’s economic model can fluctuate dramatically with market conditions. The crypto industry has already ruined too many beautiful spreadsheets.
10. $LDO Lido
What makes Lido compelling is that it controls a massive economic engine, yet LDO has historically struggled to directly capture its value.
Users stake ETH, Lido generates protocol revenue, stETH becomes one of the most important assets in DeFi, and LDO holders essentially just govern certain aspects.
This discrepancy has been one of the token's biggest criticisms for years.
The proposed buyback framework seeks to change this: allowing protocol revenue to fund LDO purchases after specific economic conditions—including sufficient annualized income—are met.
And this is precisely where I distinguish between “executed buybacks” and “potential buybacks.” The question is, how much of that business will ultimately translate to LDO?
11. $STONK StonkFun
I've been talking about this project a lot lately.
StonkFun quickly became one of the most unusual launchpads on Solana, as it offers much greater room for users to build markets around assets beyond SOL. The basic gameplay is: find an asset, create a market around it, and somehow, Crypto Twitter shows up to trade it.
Total revenue amounted to $22.9 million, with $8.3 million generated within seven days; the widely cited model for this project allocates 60% of revenue to buy back and burn STONK.
This project requires further scrutiny, as many of the figures above come from the project dashboard and ecosystem sources, and there is significant skepticism surrounding the reward tokens and selling pressure.
But this also makes it clear what to focus on: revenue, the actual capital used to buy STONK, and the tokens genuinely sent to the burn address. If these three move in the same direction consistently, there is a real economic mechanism beneath the speculation.
12. $NET NetNet Capital
NET is almost entirely different from the other projects here because its buyback has a reference price.
NetNet is building an on-chain treasury on Robinhood Chain. The treasury holds USDG and other assets, deploys capital into products like Morpho, and is increasingly accumulating tokenized stocks.
Each NET is calculated based on the protocol's net asset value (NAV) and represents an equity stake in that balance sheet.
Below the NAV, the protocol can purchase NET at a price of approximately "NAV minus 1.5%" and burn the purchased portion.
This means the treasury does not blindly buy NET every day regardless of price. Buybacks only make sense when the market prices NET below the value of its underlying assets.
At multiples above certain NAV levels, this mechanism operates in reverse: NetNet can issue bonds to create new NET and add the proceeds to its treasury.
Buy below NAV and issue at a premium above relative NAV, allowing assets caught between these two mechanisms to grow continuously.
NET is currently trading at a significant premium to its NAV, so repurchases are not the reason I’m focusing on it today. The decisive question is whether the treasury’s compounding rate can outpace the dilution experienced by holders.
Conclusion
I believe "buyback" is about to become one of the most overused terms in the crypto industry.
And what I want to know is: where did the money go?
I look at "annual buyback amount ÷ market cap." If a protocol with a $500 million market cap consistently spends $50 million annually to buy back its tokens, that’s worth my attention. But if a token with a $10 billion market cap announces a $5 million buyback while unlocking $500 million in supply, I really don’t care.
The crypto industry has finally figured out how to generate revenue for protocols. Now I want to see which protocols are actually making these revenues meaningful for their tokens.