Event background: Experiment of community autonomy and market clearing. In March 2025, Binance launched the 'community voting delisting mechanism', marking the first time a centralized exchange partially transferred the power to determine the life and death of projects to users. Behind this seemingly democratic mechanism lies a signal that the crypto market has entered a deep clearing stage, and the industry has shifted from 'narrative-driven' to 'cash flow survival battle'.

Link:Binance will launch the first round of voting delisting on 2025-03-21

Three major metaphors of collective buybacks by project teams

  1. Liquidity crisis becomes evident
    Statistics show that 8 major projects initiated buybacks intensively from February to March, coinciding with the timeline of Binance's delisting votes. Established protocols like dYdX use 25% of protocol fees for buybacks, exposing a fatal flaw in the token economic model—when the secondary market's absorption capacity weakens, project teams are forced to consume their own blood-generating ability to maintain token prices, creating a vicious cycle.

  2. Reconstruction of valuation systems
    Aerodrome reveals a new valuation logic through differentiated paths like public product fund buybacks and community discussions initiated by Jito: token value is no longer dependent on TVL or user growth, but rather on the project's actual cash flow buyback capacity. This shift is essentially a poor imitation of traditional finance's 'stock buyback' logic, yet it lacks supporting mechanisms like dividends.

  3. Narrowing space for regulatory arbitrage
    The entry of security-related projects like GoPlus into the buyback trend is particularly concerning. When infrastructure projects need to stabilize token prices, it indicates that the entire ecosystem's 'safety cushion' has been nearly exhausted. This may be related to the strict determination of token securities by global regulatory agencies, forcing project teams to proactively avoid legal risks.

Critical point characteristics: from the prisoner's dilemma to a community of shared destiny

The current crypto industry is undergoing a severe test—the end of the 'free-rider' era and the reshaping of survival models. In the past, project teams could prioritize expanding ecosystems, relying on market sentiment and narratives to maintain token prices, without considering the long-term health of token economics. But now, Binance's 'community voting delisting' mechanism, combined with tightening market liquidity, forces project teams to confront reality: without buybacks, they may face elimination.

This pressure has given rise to an informal alliance, with project teams collectively acting to stabilize market confidence through buybacks. On the surface, this appears to be a desperate self-preservation tactic, but at a deeper level, it signifies that the industry is beginning to accept more mature financial logic—token value no longer relies solely on speculation but requires sustainable cash flow and actual application support.

Binance's 'community voting' mechanism seems decentralized, but it actually implies an intention of risk transfer. The exchange holds the ultimate review authority (referee) and profits from listing fees (athletes), while project teams are forced to bear the pressure of maintaining liquidity. In the short term, this may lead to further market clearing, even accelerating the death spiral of certain projects.

But in the long run, this mechanism forces the industry to raise standards. Projects that rely solely on marketing and lack real value will struggle to survive, while protocols with genuine business models and cash flow capabilities may stand out. The market is shifting from 'bad money driving out good money' to 'good money eliminating bad money', which is a necessary stage for the industry to mature.

As the buyback trend shifts from voluntary action to a survival necessity, the crypto industry has effectively accepted the valuation discipline of traditional finance. This painful transformation may be a necessary path toward maturity—the true bottom line is not the absolute value of token prices, but whether project teams can establish a sustainable business model that does not rely on token dumping. History is always strikingly similar: after the 2000 internet bubble, companies like Amazon rebuilt trust through buybacks, ultimately giving rise to the golden age of the digital economy, and now the crypto market is replaying this cruel yet necessary rite of passage.
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