In a move similar to corporate share repurchases, protocols are increasingly repurchasing tokens to reduce total circulating supply. However, instead of placing tokens in their treasury like repurchased corporate shares, a large majority of the protocols are permanently reducing the supply by placing the repurchased tokens in inaccessible/dead wallets.
Highlights for the week of 2-Feb to 8-Feb:
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- Token buyback and burn programs across major DeFi protocols removed ~$40.2M in tokens from circulation during the week of 2-Feb to 8-Feb 2026. Hyperliquid led with $20.7M, generating more revenue on the heels of HIP-4 launch (prediction markets) and all-time-high HIP-3 activity. Pump.fun contributed $9.4M in burns from meme coin and casino platform activity. Aave maintained $1M weekly buybacks under consideration for a permanent $50M annual program following December 2025 governance resolution on revenue distribution. Uniswap allocated $1.4M following the 25-Dec activation of its fee switch and 100M UNI treasury burn. Sky Ecosystem spent $1.9M in USDS to repurchase 31.57M SKY tokens as part of a $102M program funded by $435M in annualized protocol revenue. Sector adoption continued to expand with Optimism approving a 12-month program dedicating 50% of incoming Superchain sequencer revenue to OP buybacks beginning February 2026, with purchased tokens held in the Collective treasury and monthly ETH-to-OP conversions executed via OTC providers.
Total Weekly Activity: $40.2M
Top Contributors:
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- Hyperliquid (HYPE): $20.7M – Leading perpetual DEX allocating ~97-99% of trading fees to buybacks
- Pump.fun (PUMP): $9.4M – Meme coin launch platform burning fees from token creation activity
- Sky Ecosystem (SKY): $1.9M – Revenue-funded buybacks from DeFi lending protocol operations
- Jupiter (JUP): $1.7M – Solana DEX aggregator allocating 50% of protocol fees despite ongoing program evaluation
- Uniswap (UNI): $1.4M – Leading Ethereum DEX following December 2025 fee switch activation
- Lighter (LIT): $1.6M – New perpetual DEX allocating 50% of fees to buybacks since December 2025 launch
- Chainlink (LINK): $1.1M – Oracle network buyback activity
- Aave (AAVE): $1.0M – Lending protocol’s weekly buyback under proposed permanent program
- PancakeSwap (CAKE): $777K – Multi-chain DEX continuing 28-month deflation streak
- Raydium (RAY): $296K- Solana DEX allocating 12% of trading fees to buybacks
- Binance (BNB): $230K – Weekly auto-burn from BSC gas fees
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