Crypto's New Dividend Metric to Watch

Hyperliquid has done +$2B in buybacks to date, Pump.fun +$7M so far this week. Some projects do make money in crypto, and increasingly they are turning to funneling earnings directly to holders as part of their tokenomics.

For instance, Aave automated its buybacks last year, Uniswap's been expanding its buy-and-burns throughout 2026, Pendle now distributes 80% of its protocol revenues to sPENDLE holders, and Ethena is currently voting on activating its own fee switch for buybacks.

Ethena Fee Switch Vote Ties ENA Buybacks to USDe Growth on Bankless

Ethena’s fee switch vote comes with a proposed USDe-tied revenue ladder.

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These are just some of the projects doubling down here right now, which isn't surprising to see, since capturing value for a token makes said token more attractive to hold. To stand out in a sea of 1,000s of coins, many of which are static and offer no utility, give people a reason to hold, i.e. a dynamic coin that's continuously boosted by revenue.

In the context of DeFi, DefiLlama defines plain revenue as akin to "Gross Income" in TradFi, i.e. " the portion of fees that [a] protocol keeps for itself." What we are specifically talking about above (e.g. buybacks, burns, distributions, etc.) is what DefiLlama calls holders revenue, i.e. "how much value [a] protocol is distributing back to its investors."

This latter metric is a newer coining, but it's useful and worth tracking closely going forward since the trend of returning value in crypto is showing no signs of slowing down.

Of course, as I've alluded to, holders revenue can come in different forms. Ethereum simply burns a cut of ETH fees. Uniswap uses earnings to fund UNI buys, then burns the UNI. Pendle routes a big chunk of its revenue to its stakers. As for Aave, it buys AAVE but holds the ensuing tokens in a reserve for now.

Accordingly, there's no singular "right way" here, but the most dominant by size today is buybacks. Per DefiLlama 3 of the top 5 projects by holders revenue, namely Hyperliquid, Pump.fun, and Chainlink, have combined to return ~$30M to their respective holders via buybacks over the past week alone. The other top 5 projects, Canton and Tron, opt for burns instead.

It's a good time to watch this leaderboard, not just because it can give you ideas for dynamic coins for your portfolio, but also because new projects and new fee switch activations (e.g. Ethena TBD) can change it's makeup overnight. For instance, as I mentioned in my previous article, Fake World Assets has recently bounced around in the top 10-20 holders revenue projects despite only launching one month ago on Ethereum.

Whether projects live up to and maintain their commitments here will increasingly matter as a point of scrutiny, too. For example, DefiLlama's new Universal Token Ratings measure projects across "Disclosure" and "Performance" tracks, and consideration of buybacks/burns (and whether they match public statements) are weighted into the Performance scoring.

It's not a huge weighting, but it can certainly make a difference. Is it a coincidence or more that the only AAA scored coin today, UNI, is at the heart of one of the largest holders revenue generating systems onchain today?

You can draw your own conclusions, but either way holders revenue is only poised to get more important in the future, so be sure to keep this metric on your radar in the months ahead.