Data Interpretation of Six Major Crypto Protocols: Revenue Continues to Grow, Why Aren’t Token Prices Rising?

Author: Castle Labs

Compiled by: TechFlow

TechFlow Insight: In the first half of this year, crypto protocols generated a total revenue of $7.42 billion, yet most tokens failed to outperform their underlying fundamentals. Investors are shifting from gambling to genuinely examining product revenue distribution and token value capture mechanisms, rather than blindly chasing gains. This article breaks down the revenue sources, distribution methods, and token emission pressures of six major protocols, revealing why high revenue doesn't equate to token price increases — a critical issue every holder should understand right now.

Since the start of this year, crypto protocols have cumulatively generated $7.42 billion in revenue.

Chart: Net token value flow for six major protocols in the first half of 2026 (holder revenue minus token emissions). Hyperliquid had a net inflow of $98.67 million, while Sky had a net outflow of $25.03 million. Source: Castle Labs.

Despite these staggering numbers, most tokens in the crypto space still fail to reflect the success of their underlying protocols.

Not all revenue is created equal.

This is a problem inherent in the industry from the start, but the situation is changing. The questions investors ask when evaluating tokens are evolving; they are beginning to focus on product revenue generation, spending, and value capture for holders. This marks a shift from speculative gambling to genuine investment.

Most of the time, holders want answers to the following questions:

How does the protocol generate revenue, and is it sustainable?

How do they distribute revenue? Can holders capture value from it?

How much token value is used for emissions, including inflation, unlocks, and incentives?

Is there an equity distribution that grants greater rights than existing holders?

Answering these four questions determines a project's weight in investors' eyes, but most projects cannot provide clear answers. Every token has a different value capture mechanism, and some have none at all. Even with direct value sharing, token performance can fall short of expectations.

Take PumpFun as an example: since its token launch, the protocol has generated approximately $450 million in revenue (over a one-year timeframe), but the token has been trapped in an endless decline due to multiple factors, including token unlock speed and unmet airdrop expectations.

Chart: PumpFun's daily revenue (orange) vs. token price (cyan) since the PUMP token launch, showing a persistent divergence between revenue and price. Source: Castle Labs.

This article focuses on analyzing the different ways leading protocols generate and distribute revenue, considering emission and incentive factors, to show investors the details they should pay attention to when evaluating a protocol or token.

Crypto Revenue Sources & Distribution

Before discussing value capture for holders, the fundamental question is to quantify the revenue generated by major products and how it is distributed. This analysis examines six protocols (Aave, Aerodrome, Hyperliquid, Pump, Sky, Uniswap), which collectively generated $726 million in revenue in the first half of 2026.

While higher revenue can be a sign of a sustainable business, looking at this number in isolation is insufficient. First, to account for short-term volatility, it's better to measure revenue over different timeframes to assess its sustainability. Therefore, we also compare revenue between Q1 and Q2 of 2026 and measure the change. For most protocols, the change is negative, reflecting the weaker Q2 performance due to overall market conditions.

Chart: Q1 vs. Q2 2026 revenue comparison for six protocols. Only Uniswap achieved positive quarter-over-quarter growth (+26.94%). Total revenue declined from $394 million to $332 million. Source: Castle Labs.

Turning to revenue sources, Hyperliquid generates revenue from trading fees on its perpetual contract exchange (native + HIP-3), spot market, code auctions, priority fees, and HyperEVM gas fees.

Aerodrome, a decentralized exchange (DEX), generates revenue through trading fees and external voting incentives (bribes). Similarly, Uniswap charges fees on trades as its revenue source.

Sky generates revenue through various products: stability fees on DAI/USDS collateralized loans, liquidation penalties, Peg Stability Module (PSM) trading fees, and interest from Direct Deposit Modules (D3Ms) and Real-World Assets (RWAs).

Continuing, Aave generates revenue from interest rate spreads (paid by borrowers), flash loans, liquidation penalties, and stability fees from its native GHO stablecoin. Pumpfun generates revenue from trading fees and graduation fees collected when a newly created token reaches a target market cap.

Having clarified the revenue sources of these protocols, we now compare them to token emissions to explore whether and how they balance. While protocol revenue for holders can be high, if token emissions are equally high, the significance of the value capture process diminishes. A protocol might have $100 million in revenue, but if it achieves this by minting $200 million worth of tokens annually, the picture is entirely different. Furthermore, token emissions are important because they show how much value flows to inflation, team or investor token unlocks, and most importantly, incentives.

Chart: Comparison of token emissions (orange bars) vs. the proportion of revenue allocated to holders (cyan line) for six protocols. Hyperliquid allocates 100% of revenue to holders. Source: Castle Labs.

Revenue distribution for most protocols is typically split between holders and the treasury. The specific details depend on the particular protocol mechanism and the governance handling this distribution.

To illustrate how emissions affect tokens, we subtract emissions from holder revenue. For Aerodrome, Sky, and Uniswap, the net token flow becomes negative after this calculation, even with revenue allocated to holders. This indicates that these protocols are emitting more tokens to maintain current revenue levels, reducing the net value flowing to holders.

Chart: Net token value flow for six protocols over the past 180 days, calculated as holder revenue minus token emissions. Source: Castle Labs.

Currently, holders capture value through two primary methods: buybacks and fee distribution.

Buybacks are one of the simplest, albeit indirect, ways for projects to distribute value to holders, achieved by using revenue to purchase and burn tokens.

Buybacks often return tokens to the protocol treasury for future incentives or staking rewards; for example, Aave transfers repurchased tokens to its treasury.

For greater consistency, most protocols burn these assets, reducing supply. For instance, Lighter burned approximately 15.6 million LIT tokens (6.6% of supply) worth $36 million, acquired through revenue.

Chart: On-chain record of Lighter transferring 15,638,700 LIT (approximately $36.125 million) from the treasury to a burn address. Source: Castle Labs.

Hyperliquid executes buybacks and burns programmatically, having burned over 47 million HYPE tokens to date, approximately 4.72% of its supply. Uniswap executed a 100 million UNI token burn in December 2025, accumulating a total burn of 107 million UNI tokens (approximately 11% of total supply), sourced from its enabled fees.

Not all tokens have burns, and the execution method for burns is nuanced. For example, BNB previously conducted quarterly burns. However, these were often perceived as less effective than users expected because they burned non-circulating tokens, thus having no real impact on market dynamics. Users must examine the fine print of burns: where are the tokens burned from? The circulating supply or the non-circulating supply?

Each project executes buybacks differently. Maple Finance holders recently voted in favor of a buyback plan that scales with revenue, allocating an increasing share to holders as revenue grows. This is an update to its MIP-019 proposal, which previously used 25% of revenue for buybacks. Based on the average $1.15 million in revenue for the first half of 2026, buybacks would be scaled down to 10%, which might not be the best news for holders, but the proposal passed with 99.97% of votes in favor.

Chart: Maple Finance MIP-021's tiered buyback ratio proposal based on monthly revenue. The buyback ratio increases to 30% when monthly revenue exceeds $2 million. Source: Castle Labs.

Additionally, holders can choose to stake tokens into the protocol and earn staking yields from the treasury. Following a recent tokenomics update, Lighter's target staking yield is 6%. Based on the current staking level of 125 million tokens, this would distribute 7.5 million LIT tokens annually.

Similarly, over 430 million HYPE tokens are staked, earning yields from the future emission reserve, estimated at 2.1%.

Buybacks and burns alone cannot save a project from poor tokenomics or declining revenue and should be considered within the broader framework of each protocol's buyers and sellers. However, they can be used to drive ecosystem growth and bootstrap liquidity, while slowly decreasing over time to allow for organic growth. Burns have a similar mechanism, potentially using platform activity to counter inflationary tokenomics.

Fee Distribution

Other protocols, such as Aerodrome and Curve Finance, use the ve-tokenomics (Ve) model to distribute fees directly. In this model, holders stake tokens and convert them into vote-escrowed tokens (e.g., veAERO or veCRV).

It creates economic value for holders through different mechanisms:

Protocol Trading Fees: These protocols allocate 50-100% of fees to ve-token holders.

Boosting Yields: Holding these tokens also increases the yields for liquidity providers (LPs) in these exchange pools.

Bribes: Protocols pay cash incentives to ve-holders in exchange for their governance votes, directing future rewards to specific liquidity pools.

A hallmark of ve-protocols is an inherent design that drives strong emissions, which partly explains their high fee distribution growth achieved through inflation.

Using these methods, these protocols have generated over $2.75 billion in holder revenue to date, primarily driven by Hyperliquid and Uniswap (due to the 100 million UNI burn in December 2025).

Chart: Cumulative revenue distributed to holders by the six protocols has exceeded $2.75 billion, with Hyperliquid and Uniswap contributing the majority share. Source: Castle Labs.

But as we mentioned, value capture alone is insufficient; emissions also need to be balanced.

In the next section, we explore other reasons beyond holder revenue and emissions that might hinder token growth.

The Alluring Trap of Tokens

Over time, crypto products have matured and generated substantial revenue, but revenue does not necessarily mean the token will perform better.

Most tokens of revenue-generating products underperform due to the following reasons:

Revenue Does Not Flow to the Token: Even if a protocol generates meaningful revenue, this value often stays in the treasury rather than flowing to holders. The method of buyback matters. Treasury retention is discretionary and depends on the protocol. Without a contractual obligation, protocols can pause, adjust, or cancel buybacks at any time. While governance underlies these decisions, a significant portion of voting power is controlled by the project team.

Equity-Token Separation Exists, Making Holders Second-Class Citizens: An increasing number of companies now adopt dual equity and token structures. A classic example of such a token is XRP. Ripple Labs stock has performed well since 2025, rising 105%, while the XRP token has fallen 45% over the same period. They issue both tokens and equity, but because holders have no specific rights to the company's revenue, there is no value capture. In contrast, equity holders capture this value and perform well.

Higher Unlock Speeds Increase Expected Selling Pressure: Even with revenue sharing, a higher rate of supply unlock schedule depresses the token, as explained earlier in the discussion on token emissions. Another aspect is the low circulating supply and high FDV nature of tokens. A large portion of the supply still needs to be unlocked and absorbed by the market, which can effectively lower the protocol's P/S ratio, making it appear "cheap," but the actual circulating supply shock is expected to be part of future emissions.

Chart: Circulating supply as a percentage of Fully Diluted Value (FDV) for the six tokens. HYPE is only 23.28%, while Sky is 99.63%. Source: Castle Labs.

Combined, these factors reflect the true nature of tokens and, in most cases, explain price action, although other factors may influence their performance.

The PUMP token has fallen 60% since its launch, despite the project having completed over $315 million in buybacks. On the other hand, HYPE has risen 1400% since its launch and has returned $1.2 billion to shareholders through buybacks. Both conduct continuous buybacks, but PUMP's price performance has been disappointing due to factors such as lack of team communication, no airdrops, rapid unlocks, and market selling of the token.

The AAVE token has been struggling since the beginning of the year, having completed $45 million in buybacks since the buyback program launched in April 2025 (currently paused due to the Kelp DAO incident). This is caused by multiple factors, including the departure of DAO service providers like BGD Labs and ACI, the impact of the Kelp DAO incident on Aave, and increased institutional competition from Morpho.

Chart: Relative price performance of HYPE, UNI, AERO, Aave, Pump, and Sky. HYPE significantly outperforms, while the rest are mostly near or below launch levels. Source: Castle Labs.

In Aave's case, they also lost over $23 million executing these buybacks due to asset price declines. They bought AAVE at an average price of