Decentralized finance protocols have spent $640 million on token buybacks in 2026, a 17 percent increase from the prior year and a jump from $366,000 in 2024.
Hyperliquid and Pump.fun account for almost 90 percent of the total. Hyperliquid, the Layer 1 for perpetual futures, has allocated 99 percent of protocol revenue to buy back and burn its HYPE token. Pump.fun, the memecoin launch platform, directs 50 percent of revenue toward buybacks and burns of PUMP, removing $446.65 million worth from circulation.
Buybacks create demand while burns reduce circulating supply, linking protocol economics to token value—a connection many crypto projects have struggled to establish.
"Bought and burned tokens" is "much more straightforward" to communicate than governance rights or fee structures, said Orest Gavryliak, chief legal officer at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch.
Max Shannon, senior research associate at Bitwise Europe, noted that directing protocol revenue to token acquisition and burning connects the project's success to its token's value. The strategy marks a shift from speculative narratives that previously dominated the industry.
But the approach carries trade-offs. Capital spent on buybacks cannot fund developer hiring, product expansion, balance sheet strengthening, or operational growth.
Spark, the DeFi infrastructure protocol, uses a different model. It has acquired over 143 million SPK tokens through open-market buybacks funded by protocol surplus. Rather than burn these tokens, Spark holds them in its treasury to reward long-term ecosystem participants, according to co-founder and chief executive Sam MacPherson.
