Crypto tokens are increasingly being valued like stocks in traditional finance, based on project revenue, token buyback mechanics, and supply reduction rather than market hype alone. This fundamental shift means many digital assets may still be significantly undervalued compared to their real economic value, according to industry leaders managing billions in crypto assets.

How Are Crypto Projects Linking Revenue to Token Value?

For years, a puzzling question haunted the crypto market: why didn't token prices reflect the success of their underlying platforms? Platforms attracted millions of users and generated billions in revenue, yet token holders saw little direct benefit. That dynamic is changing as projects adopt a model similar to corporate stock buyback programs.

The mechanism works like this:

• Revenue Capture: Crypto projects direct a significant portion of their trading fees or protocol revenue toward token buybacks.
• Token Burning: Projects purchase tokens from the open market and permanently remove them from circulation.
• Supply Reduction: With fewer tokens in existence and steady or growing demand, the remaining tokens become scarcer and potentially more valuable.
• Economic Alignment: Token holders now benefit directly from the protocol's profitability, similar to how shareholders benefit from corporate earnings.

Hyperliquid, a decentralized trading platform, offers the clearest example of this model in action. Since launching its HYPE token in late 2024, the project has directed approximately 99% of its trading fee revenue toward buybacks and burns. From launch through summer 2026, Hyperliquid allocated about $1.3 billion to this purpose. The token's price rose nearly 800% over that period, entering the top ten largest crypto assets despite not being listed on major exchanges.

Which Major Protocols Are Adopting Revenue-Sharing Tokenomics?

Several established decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and blockchain networks are now implementing similar mechanisms, signaling a broader industry shift toward business-like token economics:

• Uniswap (UNI token): By August 2026, the decentralized exchange protocol generated approximately $100 million in annual revenue, with all of it directed toward UNI buybacks and burns. In December 2025, following the UNIfication proposal, Uniswap burned 100 million UNI tokens, representing 10% of the maximum supply, with an additional 7 million UNI burned later.
• Aave (AAVE token): Since April 2025, the lending protocol has been purchasing AAVE tokens weekly using protocol revenue. About $30 million annually, or roughly 20% of total revenue, goes toward buybacks. In June 2026, Aave launched Aavenomics 3.0, which automatically uses protocol and GHO stablecoin revenue for token repurchases. By August 2026, the project had bought back more than 1.2% of total token supply.
• Pump (PUMP token): The meme coin launch service adopted one of the most aggressive buyback models. Within days of PUMP's July 2025 launch, the project began repurchasing tokens. By April 2026, tokens worth $370 million had been burned, representing 36% of circulating supply. Additionally, 50% of the following year's net profit flows to an irreversible smart contract that automatically buys back and burns tokens. The service's annual revenue is estimated at $328 million.
• Lighter (LIT token): The trading blockchain platform, a competitor to Hyperliquid, has directed a portion of commission revenue toward LIT buybacks and burns since its early 2026 launch. By mid-2026, the project had repurchased approximately 6% of circulating tokens. The platform's annual revenue is about $67 million.

The trend extends beyond DeFi services to layer-1 blockchains, which form the foundation for decentralized applications. Solana developers have proposed reducing SOL token inflation and increasing fee burning by nearly 14 times. Aptos previously took a similar step, increasing transaction fees tenfold. User activity did not decline; instead, it nearly tripled. As a result, annual APT token burning grew from approximately 90,000 tokens to 1.9 million tokens.

Why Did This Model Take So Long to Emerge?

Regulatory uncertainty held back this shift for years. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) previously viewed the distribution of income to token holders as a potential indicator of illegal securities issuance. This regulatory concern prevented major projects like Uniswap and Aave from directly sharing revenue with token holders, so they issued governance tokens instead, which granted voting rights but not income rights.

The landscape changed after Ripple's 2023 court victory against the SEC, which limited the application of securities law to crypto tokens. Under SEC Chair Paul Atkins, the regulator's stance toward crypto businesses softened further, reopening the door for projects to distribute income through tokenomics.

What Do Experts Say About Valuation Potential?

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, a major crypto asset management firm overseeing spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana, believes the market has not yet fully priced in this shift. He compares the current stage of the crypto market to internet companies in the early 2000s, when investors doubted that large platforms could generate revenue from advertising without losing users.

"Uniswap is already comparable to Coinbase in spot trading volumes, but is valued at only $2.4 billion. Aave and Morpho, which is also improving tokenomics, hold strong positions in the on-chain lending market, but their combined capitalization is also only $2.4 billion. Hyperliquid is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies I have ever seen, but the market would conditionally value it at only 17 to 60 years of profits. For a business of this scale and growth rate, this is an extremely low valuation," said Matt Hougan.

Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise

Hougan emphasized that over the next one to two years, DeFi projects and layer-1 blockchains may direct an increasing share of revenue to support their tokens, while many such projects remain undervalued relative to their real economic scale.

It is important to note that tokens are not shares and do not grant owners legal rights to cash flows in the way equity ownership does. For accounting purposes, tokens represent a special category of digital asset rather than traditional financial instruments. This distinction matters for investors evaluating the long-term sustainability of revenue-sharing models in crypto.