Crypto protocols are increasingly using revenue to buy back their native tokens, a practice that has seen spending reach approximately $640 million so far in 2026—a 17 percent increase compared to the same period in 2025.
The figure dwarfs the $366,000 spent by projects in 2024. The trend mirrors behaviors of public companies in traditional finance, connecting protocol performance directly to token value.
Hyperliquid and Pump.fun dominate this activity, collectively responsible for almost 90 percent of current buyback spend. These protocols use buybacks to create demand for their tokens and subsequently burn them to reduce circulating supply, which applies upward pressure on price.
Max Shannon, a senior research associate at Bitwise Europe, said buybacks and burns offer an effective way to accrue value for tokenholders. They establish a continuous bid in the open market, directly tethering token success to the underlying economic activity.
Hyperliquid allocates 99 percent of its revenue to buying back and burning its HYPE token. Pump.fun dedicates 50 percent of its revenue to acquiring and burning its PUMP token. The protocol has already removed $446.65 million worth of PUMP from circulation through this mechanism.
Other protocols employ variations of this strategy. DeFi infrastructure protocol Spark has acquired over 143 million SPK tokens through open-market buybacks funded by its protocol surplus, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Sam MacPherson. Unlike Hyperliquid and Pump.fun, these SPK tokens remain in the Spark treasury, intended for use in rewarding long-term participants within the protocol's ecosystem.
The adoption of token buybacks offers a more tangible connection for holders to a protocol's economic activity. Orest Gavryliak, chief legal officer at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, said telling users a project has "bought and burned tokens" is "much more straightforward" than explaining governance rights or fee structures.
However, a counter-perspective highlights the opportunity cost. Every dollar a protocol spends on token buybacks is a dollar that could be directed toward hiring developers, expanding business operations, strengthening the balance sheet, or building product features.
The shift toward economically-aligned models marks a departure for an industry that previously saw many projects driven by speculative narratives without clear value accrual mechanisms.
