JST Undergoes Second Buyback and Burn: Cumulative Burn Reaches 10.96% of Total Supply, Accelerating Entry into New Phase of Value Growth

On January 15, 2026, the JST token officially completed its second large-scale buyback and burn. This burn action not only demonstrates the project's firm commitment to its deflationary mechanism but also showcases the profitability and financial health of the JUST ecosystem to the entire cryptocurrency market through the destruction of 525,000,000 JST tokens, representing 5.3% of the total supply.

According to the official announcement from JustLend DAO, this burn corresponds to an estimated value exceeding $21 million. Combined with the amount from the first JST burn, the cumulative number of JST tokens burned has reached 1,084,890,753, accounting for 10.96% of the total supply. This means that in less than three months, JST has achieved the permanent removal of over one-tenth of its total supply, demonstrating an astonishing deflationary pace.

From a broader perspective, this burn marks a fundamental evolution in JST's value narrative. It is transitioning from a governance token to an equity-like asset anchored to the growth of ecosystem cash flows. This process not only enhances the scarcity and value foundation of the JST token but also provides a clear, actionable path for the decentralized finance sector—one where token value is driven by real yield—showcasing a new paradigm of transparent and sustainable deflation.

JustLend DAO Ecosystem Demonstrates Robust Performance, Laying the Financial Foundation for Large-Scale Buyback

Such a large-scale buyback and burn necessarily requires a solid financial foundation. The announcement clearly reveals the dual pillars of funding sources: a substantial $10,192,875 came from JustLend DAO's net profit in Q4 2025, while another $10,340,249 originated from the project's accumulated reserve of retained earnings. These figures themselves serve as the most powerful proof of performance, pointing to a core fact: the JustLend DAO ecosystem not only possesses strong immediate profitability but also boasts a robust financial structure and sustainable cash flow.

A deeper analysis of JustLend DAO's performance in Q4 2025 reveals several clear growth trajectories. Firstly, as the flagship lending protocol within the JUST ecosystem, JustLend DAO benefited from the continuous improvement of the TRON infrastructure, with its Total Value Locked (TVL) surpassing the $7.08 billion mark in Q4, consistently ranking among the top three in the lending market. The lending activity in its SBM market also climbed to a new cyclical high.

It is noteworthy that the $10,340,249 in retained earnings, which forms a significant part of this buyback fund, can be traced back to the reserve profits generated from funds deposited into the SBM USDT market during JST's first buyback. The appreciation process of these funds is, in itself, the most direct proof of the SBM market's strong profitability. It showcases JustLend DAO's sophisticated financial operation model: strategically reinvesting ecosystem profits to enable "self-sustaining" growth within the protocol, thereby providing an endogenous and sustainable source of funds for subsequent value distribution.

Building on this, JustLend DAO's revenue structure is trending towards greater diversification. While the traditional lending market, its core business, maintains steady growth, JustLend DAO has innovatively built a product matrix including sTRX (Staked TRX) and Energy Rental, significantly expanding the breadth and depth of its value capture.

Among these, the sTRX service allows users to stake TRX for rewards while maintaining the flexibility to participate in other DeFi activities. This innovative design significantly enhances capital efficiency and user stickiness. As of January 15, the platform's TRX staking volume has exceeded 9.3 billion tokens. This staggering figure not only reflects the community's high recognition of the sTRX product but also generates considerable and sustainable service revenue.

Simultaneously, the "Energy Rental" service, designed to reduce users' on-chain operation costs, has demonstrated strong market appeal through active fee optimization. Since September 2025, the base fee for this service has been significantly reduced from 15% to a more competitive 8%. The fee optimization directly stimulated market demand and transaction frequency, thereby creating steady incremental revenue for the protocol through more active leasing business.

While its core product matrix continues to drive growth, JustLend DAO, focusing on lowering the barrier to entry for mainstream users, innovatively launched the GasFree smart wallet in March 2025. This feature completely breaks down the long-standing barrier for new users who previously had to hold native tokens (TRX) in advance to pay transaction fees. It allows users to deduct and pay the required network fees directly from the token assets they are transferring (e.g., USDT). This design not only achieves ultimate operational convenience but fundamentally broadens the accessibility of blockchain finance.

To accelerate the adoption of this innovative feature, JustLend DAO simultaneously launched an attractive 90% transaction fee subsidy campaign. Supported by this campaign, users utilizing the GasFree function for USDT transfers only need to pay an extremely low fee of approximately 1 USDT. This combined strategy quickly ignited market demand. As of January 15, the total transaction volume driven by the GasFree smart wallet has exceeded $46 billion. This astonishing scale not only validates the market's strong desire for a frictionless transaction experience but has also directly saved users over $36.25 million in cumulative network fee costs. This innovation, by significantly reducing actual usage costs and cognitive barriers, has introduced massive incremental users and capital flow into the ecosystem, constituting another powerful growth engine for the platform's network effects and revenue potential.

Meanwhile, another funding channel in the buyback and burn plan, namely the incremental revenue from the USDD multi-chain ecosystem (the portion exceeding $10 million), also constitutes a significant source of value not to be overlooked. USDD, as the core decentralized stablecoin of the TRON ecosystem, has seen remarkable success with its multi-chain expansion strategy. It has been successfully deployed on mainstream public chains like Ethereum and BNB Chain, broadening its application scenarios and user base.

The value of its ecosystem recently achieved a milestone leap. On January 14, USDD's TVL broke through the $1 billion mark. This means that in less than two months, USDD's TVL scale achieved an astonishing 100% growth. Its expansion speed and market acceptance fully confirm the strong momentum and deep asset appeal of this stablecoin within the multi-chain ecosystem. The rapid growth of its TVL and the continuous prosperity of its ecosystem have significantly increased the potential scale of this funding channel, providing a predictable source of value for JST's subsequent quarterly buyback and burn plans.

Through deep integration with various DeFi protocols, USDD not only consolidates its peg stability but also creates continuous value inflow for the entire ecosystem. The JST buyback and burn plan incorporates the excess revenue from the USDD ecosystem, constructing a value closed-loop of "stablecoin + lending protocol + governance token." In this model, the expansion and prosperity of USDD and JustLend DAO directly fuel JST's deflation, while the increase in JST's value, in turn, enhances the attractiveness and cohesion of the entire TRON DeFi ecosystem, creating a powerful internal synergy and value feedback effect.

Deepening the Deflationary Mechanism: The Reshaping of JST's Value Foundation

In summary, this buyback and burn is triggering a series of profound structural changes. Most fundamentally, it has completed the reshaping of the logic supporting JST's value. JST is no longer merely a "utility token" for paying network fees or participating in governance votes; it has evolved into an "equity-like asset" directly anchored to the cash flow performance of JustLend DAO, USDD, and their associated ecosystems.

Through the buyback and burn mechanism, the profit growth of the ecosystem is continuously injected into the value foundation of the JST token. This makes holding JST equivalent to holding a certificate of equity that shares in the future profit growth of the ecosystem. On January 8, CoinMarketCap data showed that JST's market capitalization historically broke through the $400 million mark. This is not just a numerical leap but substantial market recognition of its new positioning. Accompanying the rise in market cap was increased capital activity. On January 8, its 24-hour trading volume significantly increased by 21.92%, reaching $31.49 million. Its price also showed a steady increase of 10.82% over the past month, with a daily gain of 3.1%.

The synchronized expansion of trading volume and market capitalization at this key juncture is not a random market fluctuation but a clear "vote of confidence" from the capital markets regarding the improving fundamentals of the JUST ecosystem, particularly the profitability and value distribution mechanism demonstrated by the buyback and burn.

Secondly, the JST buyback and burn also brings substantial appreciation in governance power. As the total token supply irreversibly decreases, the governance weight each remaining JST token represents in the protocol will correspondingly increase. This means long-term holders not only enjoy the economic benefits of value appreciation but also see their voice in key community decisions (such as parameter adjustments, new product launches, treasury fund usage, etc.) amplified. This design deeply aligns the interests of core community members with the long-term success of the protocol, greatly enhancing community stability and engagement.

From a broader industry perspective, JST's buyback and burn practice provides a clear and exemplary new paradigm for tokenomics in the DeFi space. Removing 10.96% of the total supply through just two burn rounds in an extremely short timeframe not only demonstrates efficient execution but, more profoundly, deeply aligns the protocol's financial success with the interests of token holders, thereby establishing a model for a virtuous cycle of "value creation - value distribution."

This model fundamentally shifts the old logic where token value relied on speculative narratives towards a sustainable path driven by the protocol's fundamental cash flows. It provides a solid and credible case study for the industry on how to construct economic models with substantive value support.

Looking ahead, with JST's quarterly buyback and burn becoming the norm, a clear, predictable deflationary path has been laid out. The scarcity of JST will be a deterministic narrative that strengthens over time. Each quarterly report disclosure and the subsequent burn will serve as a catalyst for reassessing its intrinsic value.