Do buybacks or dividends perform better for DeFi tokens?
We learned 3 things from this analysis:
Buyback tokens outperformed on average. +19.7% median vs +11.1% for direct distribution tokens.
Larger tokens performed better. Market cap vs YTD return has a strong correlation with the largest tokens in this dataset. Weighted by market cap, buyback returns explode to 190% vs direct distribution’s +29%.
Protocols that distribute a small portion of revenue underperformed protocols that didn’t share any revenue at all.
A larger share of protocols distributing any revenue have positive price performance YTD compared to protocols that don’t share revenue.
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The Revenue landscape transformed over the last two years
The total number of protocols with Holder Revenue has increased dramatically over the last two years.
Protocols have earned over $1b per month in total revenue for the last 23 months.
Holder revenue as a % of total protocol revenue is trending up. Two years ago, 5% of total protocol revenue went to holders.
After falling for the first half of this year, 15% of total protocol revenue is being distributed to holders.
September Revenue Trends
September is on pace to be the largest month for total holders revenue since January.
Hyperliquid is distributing the largest share of holders revenue this month, accounting for 33% of the total.
Last week, NEAR intents generated $600k in revenue, the highest week ever. NEAR Intents will finish September as the highest month of revenue to date. Most of this revenue buys back NEAR tokens on the open market.
September will be Raydium’s highest revenue month in over a year. Zooming out further, this revenue spike is less than half of July 2025’s. A portion of fees are allocated to RAY token buybacks.
Similar story for Uniswap - September will be a record month for holders revenue, with over $15m brought in through UNI’s buyback & burn mechanism.
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DefiLlama Research |
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Zama is DeFi's universal entry point for shielding, transferring, earning, and swapping digital assets confidentially.
Sentora just shipped a purpose-built vault that lets PYUSD holders earn yield by lending directly against Huma Finance's PayFi Strategy Token ($PST). This represents one of DeFi's most direct efforts to bring real-world payment credit, as opposed to treasuries or crypto collateral, onchain.
Superior performance is hard to manufacture; transparency is a choice. This week, we want to highlight the way that new data can affect token ratings by taking a close look at Lido’s governance token, LDO.
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Market Overview |
7d Net Flows by Chain
Yield Watch This Week
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Ask LlamaAI What are the top yields this week? Which pools are increasing in APY, which pools are decreasing, and what are the top pools?
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