Written by: Dingdang, Odaily Planet Daily
On June 19, CEO and founder Humayun Sheikh announced the launch of a large-scale buyback plan: the Fetch Foundation will collaborate with several exchanges and market makers to jointly promote a buyback action totaling $50 million for FET tokens. Behind this is the continuous growth in demand for its agent platform and ASI-1 application. 'FET is currently undervalued by the market,' he stated directly.
This buyback plan is not an isolated case but reflects an increasingly obvious trend 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 altcoin market's trading volume has plummeted, and investor sentiment is weak. The project parties seem to have entered a collective 'survival mode': against the backdrop of harder financing and shrinking valuations, how to survive and how to tell a story that can still be believed has become a common challenge for every project.
And token buybacks are becoming the common answer for more and more projects.
The logic of buybacks under survival narratives
If the main theme of a bull market is 'growth stories,' then a bear market speaks of 'cash flow strength.' Token buybacks are a natural extension of this logic: using the project's own funds to buy back circulating tokens, which reduces market selling pressure and stabilizes the token price; on the other hand, it is also a declaration to the outside world, 'We still have the ability and confidence.'
In this process, buybacks are not just market operations, but a financial-level 'self-certification' mechanism. Only when a project has sufficient income and reserves can it dare to put real money on the line to 'bet' on its future. For investors, this behavior itself is a testament to the project's value.
But precisely because of this, the projects that can truly sustain buybacks are often only a small part. Most projects can only hang 'buyback' on governance proposals or roadmaps, and in the end, nothing comes of it. How the buyback mechanism is designed, whether it will be destroyed, and whether it will be locked is certainly important, but the most core question is always: do you have real, stable, and sustainable income?
Fetch.ai's buyback plan originated from the surge in usage of its ASI-1 and agent platform. While platform value is rising, the token price has stagnated. The $50 million fund comes from the foundation's reserves; this amount may not be enough to rewrite FET's price curve, but importantly, if the plan is implemented, it will break the market's ingrained impression of the project as 'cash flow deficient.'
Who will be the next to buy back?
After 2024, several established projects have successively launched or even executed buyback plans. Although the methods of buyback vary, the motivations behind them are highly consistent: leveraging cash flow to boost confidence.
On April 9, 2025, Aave's buyback proposal was passed with a support rate of 99.63%. The complete plan of this proposal is to buy back $1 million every week over the next 6 months, with the first buyback starting on April 10. Since the implementation of the protocol fee buyback mechanism, Aave DAO has consistently executed a $1 million weekly buyback plan. The latest data shows that the protocol has spent a total of $10 million to buy back 50,000 AAVE, with an average cost of $199.74. Based on the current market price of $264, this portion of the treasury reserve has generated about $3 million in unrealized gains. This is not only a capital operation but also reflects the execution capability and cash flow health under Aave DAO's governance structure.
On the other hand, Sky (formerly MakerDAO) co-founder Rune has fully used the 2 million USDS transferred to the buyback address for buying back SKY. Since June 4, Rune has cumulatively used 2.33 million USDS to buy back 30.227 million SKY, accounting for about 1.4% of its circulating supply, with an average buyback price of about $0.077.
On February 14, Jupiter announced that 50% of all protocol fees will be used to buy back JUP and lock it for three years, with the buyback officially starting on February 17. As of now, the value of JUP buybacks is approximately $25 million.
Hyperliquid started its buyback on March 20, using 50%-100% of its platform revenue to buy back HYPE tokens, most of which will be destroyed to reduce circulation. According to buyback data, in the past 30 days, the buyback amount reached about $55 million, with an average daily buyback amount of about $1.83 million. Based on this data, the quarterly buyback could reach $165 million. At HYPE's current price of $37, the buyback quantity is about 4.46 million tokens, accounting for about 1.3% of its circulating supply (333 million tokens).
According to data from TokenTerminal, Sky's annual revenue is about $310 million, which is only lower than Tether and Circle in the stablecoin sector. Of course, in terms of revenue scale, there is still an insurmountable gap between centralized and decentralized stablecoins. Aave's revenue over the past year is about $100 million, ranking first in the lending sector.
According to data from defillama.com, Jupiter's annual revenue is around $30 million. It is worth noting that although Hyperliquid is an emerging DeFi project, its revenue has reached $320 million in the past year. Such scale holds enormous potential in the DeFi sector. For more details, please read (With a total trading volume of $15 trillion topping the on-chain contract throne, is Hyperliquid (HYPE) the next SOL?)
Conclusion
Token buybacks are not a panacea, but in a period of scarce confidence, they are indeed an effective narrative entry point. Instead of continuing to rely on hollow 'visions,' 'roadmaps,' and 'empowerment,' it is better to regain market attention with solid revenue structures and clear financial actions.
The real competition is no longer about how big of a story you can tell, but whether you can survive to tell the day it becomes reality.
