Written by: Dingdang, Odaily Planet Daily
On June 19, CEO and founder Humayun Sheikh announced a large-scale repurchase plan: the Fetch Foundation will join forces with several exchanges and market makers to jointly promote a repurchase action of $50 million worth of FET tokens. The underlying support comes from the continuous growth of demand for its agency platform and ASI-1 application. 'FET is currently undervalued by the market,' he stated.
This repurchase plan is not an isolated case, but rather a trend that has become increasingly evident in the altcoin sector over the past few months. Funds are continuously flowing into BTC, and ETH has recently regained favor with whales and institutions. However, the trading volume in the altcoin market has sharply decreased, and investor sentiment is weak. It seems that project teams have collectively entered a 'survival mode': in the context of difficult financing and shrinking valuations, how to survive and tell a story that can still be believed has become a common issue facing every project.
Token repurchases are becoming a common answer for more and more projects.
The logic of repurchase under survival narrative
If the main theme of the bull market is 'growth stories', then the bear market tells the tale of 'cash flow strength'. Token repurchases are a natural extension of this logic: using the project's own funds to repurchase circulating tokens, on one hand, reduces market sell pressure and stabilizes token prices; on the other hand, it is a declaration that 'we still have the capability and confidence.'
In this process, repurchase is not just a market operation, but a financial-level 'self-certification' mechanism. Only when a project has sufficient income and reserves can it dare to 'bet' its future with real money. For investors, this behavior itself is a testament to the project's value.
However, because of this, only a small number of projects can sustainably repurchase. Most projects can only mention 'repurchase' in governance proposals or roadmaps, ultimately leading to nothing. How the repurchase mechanism is designed, whether to burn, and whether to lock up is certainly important, but the most crucial factor is: do you have real, stable, and sustainable income?
Fetch.ai's repurchase plan originated from the surge in usage of its ASI-1 and agency platform. While the platform's value is rising, the token price has stagnated. The $50 million in funds comes from the foundation's reserves, which may not be enough to rewrite FET's price curve, but importantly, if the plan is implemented, it will break the market's entrenched perception of the project as 'cash flow deficient.'
Who is going to repurchase next?
After 2024, several established projects have successively launched or even executed repurchase plans. Although the methods of repurchase vary, the motivation behind them is highly consistent: using cash flow to leverage confidence.
On April 9, 2025, Aave's repurchase proposal was passed with a support rate of 99.63%. The complete plan of this proposal is to repurchase $1 million weekly over the next six months, with the first phase of repurchase starting on April 10. Since implementing the protocol fee repurchase mechanism, Aave DAO has continuously executed a weekly repurchase plan of $1 million. The latest data shows that the protocol has cumulatively spent $10 million to repurchase 50,000 AAVE at an average cost of $199.74. At the current market price of $264, this portion of treasury reserves has generated approximately $3 million in unrealized gains. This not only represents a capital operation but also reflects the execution power and cash flow health under the governance structure of Aave DAO.
On the other hand, Rune, co-founder of Sky (formerly MakerDAO), has used all 2 million USDS transferred to the repurchase address for repurchasing SKY. Since June 4, Rune has cumulatively used 2.33 million USDS to repurchase 30.227 million SKY, accounting for about 1.4% of its circulation, with an average repurchase price of approximately $0.077.
On February 14, Jupiter announced that 50% of all protocol fees would be used to repurchase JUP and lock it for three years. The repurchase officially began on February 17. As of now, the value of JUP repurchased is approximately $25 million.
Hyperliquid began its repurchase on March 20, using 50% to 100% of its platform revenue for repurchasing HYPE tokens, most of which will be destroyed to reduce circulation. According to repurchase data, in the past 30 days, its repurchase amount reached approximately $55 million, with an average daily repurchase amount of $1.83 million. Based on this data, the quarterly repurchase could reach $165 million. Calculating at the current HYPE price of $37, the number of repurchased tokens would be around 4.46 million, accounting for about 1.3% of its circulation (333 million tokens).
According to TokenTerminal data, Sky's annual revenue is around $310 million, making it the third highest in the stablecoin sector, only behind Tether and Circle. Of course, from the perspective of revenue scale, there is still an insurmountable gap between centralized and decentralized stablecoins. Aave's revenue in the past year is around $100 million, ranking first in the lending sector.
According to data from defillama.com, Jupiter's annualized revenue is around $30 million. It is worth noting that although Hyperliquid is a new DeFi project, its revenue has already reached $320 million in the past year. Such scale has immense potential within the DeFi circle. For more details, you can read (With a total trading volume of $15 trillion, Hyperliquid (HYPE) is the next SOL?)
Conclusion
Token repurchase is not a panacea, but in a cycle where confidence is scarce, it is indeed an effective narrative entry point. Rather than relying on hollow 'visions', 'roadmaps', and 'empowerment', it is better to regain market attention with solid income structures and clear financial actions.
The real competition is no longer about how grand a story you tell, but whether you can survive to see the day it is realized.
