CLARITY 법안, 조용히 90%의 토큰을 죽이고 있다

Original Author: Ching Tseng

Original Translation: TechFlow

TechFlow Insights: Most tokens issued in the last cycle share a pricing problem no one wants to address: if your token cannot legally share in the protocol's revenue, what exactly are you holding? Author Ching Tseng breaks this down clearly:

The three pillars of token valuation are simultaneously weakening. Buyback & Burn is the hedging choice protocols are currently turning to. A dual-layer compliant structure may be the path forward, but in between, most tokens are being priced based on something that hasn't been clearly defined yet.

Most tokens issued in the last cycle have a valuation problem no one wants to discuss. If your token cannot legally share in protocol revenue, what exactly are you holding? The CLARITY Act didn't kill DeFi; it just forced everyone to acknowledge something they already knew deep down.

Almost every token, upon launch, carries an unspoken promise.

This promise was never written into any legal document. It lives in the footnotes of whitepapers, in Discord chat threads, and in a collective default assumption – that governance rights will eventually translate into some form of economic return. The logic is simple: as the protocol grows, you benefit.

The CLARITY Act is making this promise very difficult to fulfill.

The Law Does One Thing, But It's Crucial

The Act sorts every digital asset into one of two buckets.

Digital Commodity: Under the jurisdiction of the CFTC. Decentralized enough, with no single entity controlling over 20% of voting rights or token supply. Bitcoin and Ethereum fall into this category.

Investment Contract Asset: Under the jurisdiction of the SEC. There is an identifiable issuer, and holders expect to profit from the efforts of others.

The uncomfortable truth is that most tokens issued in the last cycle – UNI, AAVE, MORPHO, PENDLE, OP, ARB, and half the L1 and DeFi tokens you can name – don't fit neatly into either bucket. Real protocols, real revenue, but the legal nature of the token itself was never defined.

The CLARITY Act says: pick a side. Ambiguity is no longer an option.

What Most People Miss

Once a token is trading on secondary markets, under the CLARITY Act framework, it will generally lean towards CFTC jurisdiction and be classified as a digital commodity. There is essentially no turning back. All tokens already trading on @binance or @coinbase, once the Act takes effect, will likely be locked into the "digital commodity" identity. The CFTC regulates oil, gold, wheat – assets no one expects to yield quarterly dividends just by holding them.

The same logic applies here, but with an important nuance. While digital commodities fall under the CFTC and are treated like traditional commodities rather than securities, this doesn't mean protocols can risk-free distribute revenue directly to token holders. According to the joint SEC and CFTC interpretive guidance from March 2026, if holders have a reasonable expectation of profit derived from the ongoing development, management, or efforts of others, this arrangement could still be deemed an investment contract, pulling it back under SEC scrutiny. Even for tokens already trading, promises made during primary issuance or public communications, if not clearly disavowed, could persist, creating retroactive risk exposure.

This is why many protocols are turning to Buyback & Burn as a safer, more practical mechanism: channeling revenue into open market buybacks and token burns, supporting the price through reduced supply and capital appreciation, rather than directly distributing income. Another path gaining attention is layering a permissioned layer on top of the base protocol. The original permissionless layer continues with Buyback & Burn, while the new compliant access layer only opens to verified users, granting verified holders the legal right to share in protocol revenue. This idea makes sense theoretically, but it brings its own complexities: the same token carries different legal rights on different layers, raising issues of contract consistency and fair treatment of holders.

So, What's Actually Supporting Token Prices?

Historically, token valuation rested on three things.

Speculative Premium: The market believes the protocol will grow, so people pay now for potential future upside. For most tokens, this is the dominant factor.

Governance Premium: Holding the token gives you voting rights. Theoretically, controlling key infrastructure has value.

Utility Demand: Some tokens are necessary for using the protocol, or can be exchanged for fee discounts.

Before regulatory clarity, you could mix these three and tell a vague but usable valuation story. After the CLARITY Act, each pillar weakens. Once the expectation of legally sharing in revenue is removed, the speculative premium loses its foundation. The governance premium always collapses in bear markets – no one cares about voting rights for a protocol that can't return value. Utility demand is real, but it only works for a small subset of token designs.

For most tokens, the pricing logic is quietly breaking down.

What Protocols Are Doing Now

The most common response is Buyback & Burn.

Protocol revenue flows into the DAO treasury. The treasury uses this money to buy back tokens on the open market and then burns them. Holders don't get anything directly – but the supply decreases, theoretically supporting the price.

@Uniswap started at the end of 2025, directing 17% of swap fees towards buying back UNI. @aave followed in 2026, directing 100% of protocol revenue towards AAVE buybacks.

The legal logic is: capital appreciation is not income distribution. It is much harder for the SEC to attack buybacks than dividends.

But a reality check is needed here. GMX and Metaplex both ran substantial buyback programs, burning between 6.5% and 12.9% of total supply. Their token prices still dropped over 70%. Buyback & Burn is the safest option right now; it's not a cure.

There's a More Interesting Path, and Some Are Already Taking It

If buybacks aren't enough, what's next?

The idea being considered more seriously is layering a permissioned layer on top of the base protocol.

The original layer remains permissionless, open to everyone, no KYC required. Tokens on this layer continue with Buyback & Burn.

The new layer is a compliant access layer. Verified holders can enter. Here, holding the token comes with the legal right to share in protocol revenue. Direct distribution, fully compliant.

This direction makes sense. But there's an unresolved issue: you're holding the same token, but it has different legal meanings on different layers. Holders who completed KYC get revenue distributions; those who didn't, don't. Same contract, same token. This inconsistency is legally trickier than direct distribution.

Where Are We Headed?

Three scenarios all seem plausible, and I genuinely don't know which one will prevail.

Scenario One: The SEC explicitly endorses Buyback & Burn. They issue a no-action letter confirming that the buyback mechanism does not constitute an investment contract. The industry gets a clear floor to build upon. Many are waiting for this signal; it would significantly change the entire calculation.

Scenario Two: The dual-layer model becomes the standard. As the regulatory framework matures, the permissioned layer gets a clear safe harbor status. KYC holders get compliant revenue rights; non-KYC holders get liquidity and governance rights, with two parallel markets coexisting. This requires protocols to absorb significant compliance costs and move quickly.

Scenario Three: Most token prices permanently decouple from protocol performance. The protocol does well, the token doesn't. The price becomes a function of market sentiment, structurally unrelated to how much money the underlying protocol actually makes. Bad for retail holders, but not necessarily fatal for the protocol itself.

My Thoughts

I once hoped tokens could function like stocks, but the new regulations have essentially closed that door. What no one wants to fully grapple with is what this really means.

If a token cannot, in any legally defensible way, allow holders to share in the protocol's success, then holding it long-term is essentially betting on sentiment. Sentiment sometimes yields remarkable returns. But it's not an investment thesis.

Buyback & Burn is where we are now. The dual-layer model is probably where this is headed. But in between, most tokens are being priced on something that hasn't been defined yet.

The alpha for the next cycle might not be in finding the fastest-growing protocol. It might be in finding those protocols that have truly figured out how to link token value to business performance in a way that can withstand legal scrutiny.

Those are the ones worth holding.