Cryptoeconomics 2026 Thesis

Introduction

The year 2025 was big for crypto in terms of awareness, regulation and adoption. At the same time it was painful for holders and investors in terms of assets’ pricing, especially altcoins. For newly-launched tokens, 84.7% are traded below TGE valuation.

Crypto finishes this year with significant divergence from the US stock market which is traded around ATH due to Big Tech/AI growth and massive capital inflow anticipating interest rate cuts and liquidity expansion. At the same time, the brand new level of crypto adoption and market development is not priced yet.

It’s a perfect time to explore the evolution of token design & valuation approaches, and what to expect in 2026 in the industry shifting to fundamental value pricing. The Valueverse 2026 Thesis covers our value-focused observations, thoughts, and ideas around token design, yields, valuations, and related matters.

Important!

It’s not a traditional report with hundreds of pages covering every notable event across crypto. It’s a brief view of Valueverse token engineers & data analysts on cryptoeconomic design in 2025 and valuation approaches

We don’t aim to explore every token or protocol since it’s simply not possible.

Perhaps our perspective on something will differ from that of other reports or X accounts. However, it is the plurality of opinions and the opportunity to view something from a different angle, truly driving in-depth understanding.

Bitcoin

A lot was said about Bitcoin developments and institutional adoption in 2025, as well as future vision for 2026. However, despite its global recognition as a store of value, the price is below that of late January 2025 (the date of Trump's inauguration).

We propose that a possible explanation of what influences Bitcoin pricing beyond general statements like “lack of liquidity & retail after Oct 10th” could be one of key Bitcoin-related learnings for this year.

Key reason: BTC OGs are monetizing their holdings by using BTC as a collateral and selling call options, triggering a sequence of market events setting BTC in a side trend and limiting its growth.

The well-known Jeff Park delivered a quite detailed exploration on this point; and we outline original key ideas & our observations here.

IBIT has a positive call skew premium: it means that option buyers pay for upside strikers and expect growth. They buy upside vol, creating an upward pressure.

Native BTC options have a negative call skew (sloping through 150%): BTC holders sell upside vol, creating a downward pressure.

So, the IBIT buyers buy an ETF and sell call options, while BTC holders only sell calls since they already have collateral (they simply don’t need to buy anything). It adds the negative delta to the market.

Step-by-step explanation of what happens: the large BTC holder sells a call option, which is automatically purchased by the Market Maker (MM). To control the delta, the MM is forced to automatically sell the BTC when the price rises and buy it when the price falls. As a result, when the price rises, BTC sales by Market Makers are quite large, restraining further price growth.

In 2026 Bitcoin will start to grow when (1) OGs will stop selling calls (they'll expect growth and stop selling calls to avoid limiting their profits on the upward move) or (2) IBIT and other ETFs will dominate options flow, forcing market makers to hedge with the trend rather than against it. Last but not least - to make it happen, BTC growth requires significant volatility growth.

Takeaway: the market structure around the asset could have a key influence on pricing its fundamental value.

Ethereum

In 2025, Ethereum implemented a massive lineup of upgrades for L2s efficiency, mainnet block gas limits, wallets (account abstraction), ETH stake size, and ZK cryptography coming with Pectra and Fusaka.

Now Ethereum L1 is incredibly cheap with sub 1 Gwei base fee which makes L1 attractive for building mainnet dApps since user acquisition is not limited by gas fees anymore. The L2s competition now is entirely focused around ecosystem value and products, not transaction price.

Following the Bitcoin DATs, Ethereum was under the institutional spotlight in 2025, with major buyers such as Bitmine having accumulated around 5.6% of the supply.

However, the trickiest question observed widely this year has been how to value Ethereum.

Here we provide an overview of three approaches for this problem, provided by William Mougayar (Independent Researcher & Founder of Ethereum Market Research Center), Simon Kim (CEO, Hashed), and Konstantin Lomashuk with Artem Kotelskiy (Founder and Cryptoeconomist at Cyber.fund, respectively).

William Mougayar - Ethereum is a programmable coordination layer for the digital world. It is not a blockchain, it is a system with internet-like properties.

According to William, “Ethereum’s true economic power lies not in the fees it extracts (revenue), but in the vast ecosystem of value it enables (externalities) . Traditional financial metrics fail to capture this “invisible” infrastructure value.”

In the recently published original report, the three main pillars for understanding value behind Ethereum are proposed:

- Captured Value (Visible Equity): Account for current market capitalization of native ETH and all other assets issued on Ethereum (L2s, stablecoins, Defi assets) (estimated by William at $0.6–0.9 trillion).

- Economic Flow (Digital GDP): The value of all financial interactions & settlements powered by Ethereum (includes stablecoin flows, lending, swaps, RWA, and any other Defi activities). William provides the assumption that the capitalized value of this “Digital GDP” ranges from $300 billion to $3 trillion.

- The Trust Surplus (Invisible Value): Ethereum decreases so-called ‘transactional costs’ (economic term) by design, removing unnecessary intermediaries for any kind of economic activities, providing programmable trust by design. Transactional costs traditionally account for lawyers, insurance, and other expensive measures that have no alternatives in fiat economy, allowing economic agents to safely transact with each other.

William provides his estimation: “Analogous to the “consumer surplus” generated by the Internet, this unpriced utility is valued at $150–600 billion.”

Regarding ETH as an asset, William focuses on its key role as a coordination tool for the Ethereum network. This allows the network to safely operate as a public good for world-scale settlements. This includes infrastructure reliability, stimulating network participants, and cryptoeconomic security, creating & maintaining the aforementioned 'trust surplus'. Operational functions such as using ETH to purchase blockspace (gas payments) and using ETH as pristine DeFi collateral are considered technical ones around the core coordination role.

Simon Kim created ethval.com, the publicly accessible Ethereum valuation dashboard. The core idea - let’s use all valuation approaches possible and create a comprehensive picture from different angles via available data.

The collective opinion demonstrates the following:

1. The most confident metric is Ecosystem Settlement, valuing Ethereum as the settlement layer for the L1+L2 ecosystem including not only ETH, but stablecoins, token transfers, etc.
2. The second metric values “ETH as money”, accounting native ETH transfers only
3. The third metric values Ethereum as a programmable finance layer, considering entire ecosystem value

The Staking Scarcity/Validators Economics, previously widely used to value ETH as a productive asset are ranked only in the second half of the list.

The Cyber.fund’s report on Ethereum frames the network through a business strategy lens, more operational / product-oriented and focused on value capture mechanisms and competitive blockspace market.

The ETH’s value is observed as a foundational fuel and platform value accrual asset. The value accrual itself is discussed through the particular network services (such as securing assets, economic flows, rollups operation, and data availability) and related ETH revenue structure & growth possibilities. The report provides exceptional depth on the ecosystem structure building conclusions on top of onchain data.

It’s interesting that William Mougayar’s view on Ethereum and results of Simon Kim valuations are in general view co-directed and focused on ecosystem value rather than valuing Ethereum as a revenue-based company (see Ecosystem Settlement & App Capital Value at ethval.com). The core difference is the William’s Trust Surplus approach which has an extreme significance to be considered since it represents the value of solving a historically existent economic problem known as “transactional costs”. The Cyber.Fund approach focuses more on the tangible business metrics of network operations, possible growth pathways, and the ETH value accrual.

In Valueverse, we didn’t focus exactly on valuing Ethereum rather than explaining the value-capturing structure for the ETH asset. For this purpose we used Value-Focused token classification framework that accounts Value Transfer and Consensus Parts:

It aligned with researches discussed above:

• Value Transfer accounts for all value, ultimately accrued by ETH from being used for any kind of state update (what exactly includes any act of economic activities or settlements in the network), triggering ETH deflation as a result. Thus, the value of all Ethereum-wise settlements are accounted for in Value Transfer, and their influence on ETH supply is accounted for in the Cashflow part.
• The Consensus part accounts for validators’ activities resulting in cryptoeconomically securing the Ethereum operation.

In turn, Consensus consists of Transferability Restriction (reflecting that cryptoeconomic security is ensured by using ETH as a slashable security deposit or so-called skin-in-the game by validators), Conditional Action (necessity to run validator and honestly participate in block production), and Cashflow reflects the reward for successful consensus participation activity.

The Consensus part explains the operation of Ethereum’s cryptoeconomic security layer, which exactly provides the Trust Surplus feature. A reliable and expensive-to-attack consensus mechanism is essential for network trust, as reflected by Ethereum's TVL and institutional adoption: money flows follow trust.

Concluding this part: we should admit that Ethereum is one of the most complex objects for valuing in history and having different approaches and angles of view on it.

Having easily measurable tangible value accruing to the native assets holders & users, Ethereum also has a lot of “hidden value” that cannot be valued directly and which valuation could be recognized by the market only at the order of magnitude scale of operation and adoption.

The revenue sharing trend

Reflecting on the ideas surrounding assets and their value, as well as the practical steps taken to change the utility of these assets (known as 'tokenomics updates' in X), it is evident that 2025 marked a turning point in the narrative around revenue and TradFi views on tokens.

The biggest organizations highlighting this trend in their reports:

• Coinbase: The "governance-only" utility tokens will shift to "revenue-tied" models.
• Delphi Digital has observed a decline in the valuation premium for Layer 1 (L1) blockchains, as the market shifts focus towards "fat applications" and sustainable revenue models.
• Messari highlights that markets are now paying attention to protocol revenue and real economic activity, not just token supply/emission narratives.

Below is a list of token revenue pioneers who adopted this approach long before it became a huge trend:

• $BNB (2017, buyback & burn)
• $MKR (2017, burn by users to repay Single-Collateral DAI interest rate)
• $OKX (2019, buyback & burn)
• $CRV (2020, vote-escrow)
• $SUSHI (2020, using fees for buybacks and further distribution in SUSHI using the xSUSHI contract)
• $GMX (2021, fee distribution to stakers)
• $AERO (2023, ve(3,3) model).

However, it did not become mainstream until 2025, when market-leading protocols such as $UNI, $LIDO, $AAVE, and $HYPE upgraded their token design to include revenue sharing.

There are two principal approaches used for revenue sharing:

1. Sharing application fees (or a dedicated part of them) with token holders, conditioned on some action to distinguish those receiving revenue and those that not. Typically, technically it is done by locking tokens in a special (often governance-related) contract enabling revenue-receiving eligibility.

Such an approach creates two token subclasses, revenue-bearing version of token and one that is tradable but doesn’t receive revenue.

2. Using application fees for buying tokens from the market (commonly denoted as ‘Buybacks’) that can be considered as an unconditional revenue-sharing model when all token holders receive indirect revenue (that can be accounted via metric of supply decrement).

Some protocols use both of these simultaneously.

While the fee sharing option is easy to understand, since it provides token holders with directly accountable revenue in a way “I hold 1 token complying with the lock-up/governance participation/staking condition and received X USD over a period”, Buybacks are more tricky. The common criticisms of fee sharing include possible taxation of this revenue in some jurisdictions and some concerns related to the legal side of sharing the revenue.

At the present moment, Buybacks are used by some of the biggest protocols in the industry. The supporting thesis are following ones:

• Buybacks are easier from the regulatory perspective since token holders don’t directly receive any fees/monetary value. Some legal frameworks such as DUNA don’t allow any direct fees sharing so buyback becomes an only option for sharing value with token holders.

• Buybacks are considered as a tax-efficient value accrual option since they don’t create a taxable event for the token holder.

• Buybacks directly support token price (while in case of with fee distribution, token price is supported by independent users that find valuable to buy and use token for receiving fees at current token price vs. fees steam in given period)

Buyback critics includes:

• Buybacks don’t provide a tangible value for token holders besides possible price growth, which highly depends on other factors and market conditions.

Note: In case of fee sharing, even if token value declines, holders receive some additional value that they can use (distribute fees amounts, or revenue per token).

• Buybacks don't enable any kind of economic loop, mechanics, or flywheel related to the token, just distributing value via indirect mechanism.

Buybacks could support the price, but don’t create coordinational value

• Buybacks is a financial engineering kind of thing to fix the absence of real utility and demand for a token.

If you need buyback to make a token valuable, why do you ever need a token?

• Insiders vs. buyback vs. possible returning-to-circulation conflict. Who decides on the moment of buyback (read: token price) and amounts? While protocol buybacks tokens, insiders could sell. If buybacks are not irreversible burnt, tokens could return to circulation, eliminating the core idea that supply decreases

If buybacks are done algorithmically and burnt, this problem is less significant.

Let’s observe examples of protocols that implemented one of these two models.

Notable protocols that implemented buybacks in 2025:

• Pump.fun $PUMP launched buybacks (without burn) and is traded around All Time Low (ALT) levels, despite spending 1.24m $SOL (~$221m accounting $SOL price at the every buyback event)
• World Liberty Finance $WLFI implemented buybacks and burnt $36m of $WLFI-denominated fees.
• Hyperliquid $HYPE spent $684m for buybacks. Total expected unlocks are much bigger than current annualized protocol revenue could buy back.
• AAVE $AAVE spent $30m on buybacks, with a proposal to spend $50m annually.

There are fewer examples of direct fee share implementations in 2025, and all of them are done using vote-escrowed token model:

• Yield Basis $YB, a protocol that solves impermanent loss in AMMs (created by Michael Egorov, the inventor of the veTokenomics model)
• Momentum Finance $MMT, a ve(3,3) model DEX on Sui

Other notable protocols launched in 2025 using variations of ve tokenomics model that don't have a direct fee-sharing feature are $VIRTUAL and $ALMANAK.

Thus, we can conclude that the tokenomics narrative is clearly dominated by the buyback idea. In this context it is worth mentioning Curve’s report “A Comparative Analysis of VE-Model and Buyback Model for DeFi Tokenomics: Curve.fi example.” here.

It proofs veTokenomics efficiency over buybacks for $CRV, our conclusion is the following one:

Using long-term lock-ups and direct fee sharing it is possible to reduce token supply by locking them almost forever for a fraction of cost (provided as fees) vs. direct buybacks

Here is our own theoretical example on how switching $HYPE from buybacks only to buybacks + fee sharing model could positively affect Hyperliquid.

Aerodrome $AERO is an example of using buybacks + fee sharing combination. The project implemented buybacks via Public Goods Fund & Flight School and spent $33.8m for $AERO purchases. At the same time $AERO has a fee sharing mechanism in veTokenomics that generated ~$192m in value for veAERO holders ($AERO rebase income excluded from this number).

Concluding this part: revenue sharing is a well-established trend that uses buybacks as a mainstream revenue distribution mechanism. As token engineers, we believe that direct fee sharing is more efficient and valuable for token holders. We foresee much wider adoption of it in the future.

Notable achievements in 2025 (non-mainstream edition)

A lot of achievements of market sectors and projects were widely discussed in X and reports.

Here we provide several achievements, that in our opinion are truly huge and deserve much more attention:

Yield Basis solved Impermanent Loss
Since the AMM invention, the Impermanent Loss problem was a huge problem that nobody could really solve. Until 2025, when Yield Basis truly solved it, launching a live product with $200m TVL traction and profitability (up to 28% BTC yield) of its IL-free leveraged AMM pools.

We were closely following Yield Basis from day one, published a first-ever report explaining protocol in details, and recently delivered Yield Basis 2026 Thesis foreseeing application of IL-free pools to the huge market of tokenized Gold and stocks.

One of the few decentralized stablecoins has gained significant adoption
The $crvUSD (Curve’s native stablecoin) which is one of the few truly decentralized stablecoins significantly expanded its market share. Why it truly deserves to be a notable 2025 achievement:

• it surpassed $GHO (Aave’s native stablecoin) in supply (563m supply in use vs. 495m)
• ranked #3 in total stablecoin volumes (during the high volatility), right after $USDT and $USDC.

It's worth mentioning that this happened after the launch of Yield Basis, which utilizes $crvUSD for IL-free Bitcoin pools.

Polygon gained significant traction as a stablecoin-purposed chain

This year, the stablecoin narrative reached a new level with the introduction of several major chains (such as Plasma, Stripe, and Tempo) that were designed specifically to facilitate stablecoin payments.

However, Polygon is a project that has existed for years and has gained significant traction in stablecoin transactions. Some time ago, this chain shifted its focus to stablecoin payments and settlements, and these are the results.

Polygon leads in new addresses using $USDC with a huge growth this year:

https://dune.com/obchakevich/polygon-pos-payments

Polygon dominates in active user addresses transacting of local stablecoins in APAC, LATAM & Africa

Besides that, Polygon is home of Polymarket, the leading prediction markets application. It also develops its own ZK interoperability solution - Agglayer, that allows users to transfer huge amounts like 1000s ETHs in seconds, preserving all the fees inside the Polygon ecosystem.

Financial results follow the clear focus on the stablecoin business:

• Polygon POS has stable ecosystem metrics that hold up well even during depressive market periods, as it doesn't rely on traditional crypto cases
• The ecosystem ranks in the top 10 by TVL (1.2 billion), TPS (50-80), and stablecoins marketcap (3 billion).
• The chain generated $6m this year in transaction fees (for example, Plasma generated only $6.7k in December)

Our impression when we studied this data (thanks for one of Polygon’s voices, Vadim): Polygon is very close to being fully established as an Ethereum payment layer.

Tokenized Bitcoin hashrate as a successful RWA asset

The RWA narrative in 2025 was huge. However, there is one RWA asset that gained significant adoption but is completely overlooked: Bitcoin hashrate.

Gomining pioneered this idea in 2023 and got a significant traction that well deserves a spot in this report.

It’s interesting because tokenized Bitcoin hashrate is one of the rarest forms of real world assets (RWA) that pay yield in crypto. It pays yield originating from Bitcoin mining as native Bitcoin, minus the amount related to electricity and maintenance costs. These costs can be decreased by using $GOMINING, which combines a discount and veTokenomics.

So, what about particular results of Bitcoin hashrate tokenization?
Gomining tokenized more than 1% of total Bitcoin hashrate (precisely - 1.138%), that is used by 4.8m millions users:

The overall Bitcoin hashrate chart is presented below:

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate

YOYO Tokenomics model

It’s quite rare when a completely new form of economic design arrives to the market. The YOYO model is such an example.

Originally, it was invented and deployed by TokenWorks for accumulating and re-selling blue chip NFTs such as Crypto Punks, Pudgy Penguins, and others.

How it works:

• The ERC20 strategy-specific token is deployed on some initial valuation and freely tradable from the deployment
• All token purchases occur in a special pool that charges fees from every swap, and this fee is going to temporary holding contract
• When the amount of accumulated fees achieves the level of cheapest NFT offer, it automatically purchases the NFT
• When NFT price goes with a certain profits, NFT is sold and profits are using for buybacking and burning the strategy-specific token

However, it only works well when the market is growing. If the NFT floor price drops below the purchase price, no NFTs can be sold for a profit. Consequently, there are no buybacks, and the fundamental token value temporarily decreases significantly until the market growth phase (since buybacks and burns are the only value drivers for a token).

However, this model becomes much more resilient to market cycles when applied to the accumulation of NFTs with cash flow.

Aerostrategy pioneered this idea, developing a protocol that accumulates veAERO using the YOYO model. How it works:

• When users buy or sell $AEROSTRAT using the $AERO token in a specifically designed Aerodrome pool, they pay a 10% tax.
• Eighty percent (or 8% from the swap) is used to accumulate veAERO NFTs at the maximum possible discount on the secondary market
• veAERO voting rights are delegated to autopilot.xyz and generate yield that is used for buying back and burning $AEROSTRAT

Accumulating asset with a cashflow creates a self-sustaining model:

• If $AEROSTRAT has significant trading volumes (no matter the - if market actively buys and token grows, or holders sell and market declines) veAERO rapidly holdings grow
• If market is down (like today) and trading volumes are low, and token price is relatively low, veAERO yield slowly but surely buybacks cheap tokens and remove them from circulation, appreciating its value

What is a more traditional finance (TradFi) analogy for such a design? If you buy a token, you become a member of the yield vehicle and hold its shares (in the economic sense). However, you need to pay an entry fee, which is used to form the yield vehicle's capital. This capital (veAERO) generates yield originating from fees captured by the Aerodrome ve(3,3) tokenomics model.

We expect to see more applications using this approach in the future.

Cryptoeconomics in 2026

By 2026, we expect the industry to shift even more toward a narrative of revenue and overall fundamental token value. This is a clear trend, which is why we are working on Valueverse — a tool for understanding and tracking token value and analyzing it on a large scale.

Institutions measure value in two ways: infrastructure (network effect and high growth potential) and revenue (applicable to DeFi products and apps).

Our vision on the future of the revenue trend:

• Paradigm shift from generic metric of Mcap/revenue(FDV/revenue) to
  Value of claim-bearing token supply divided to Revenue actually accruing to those tokens. We named it Mcap(VR) or Value-Receiving Mcap; alternative naming is Efficient Market Cap
• Revenue sharing in form of buybacks or direct fee sharing will become much more adopted than in 2025
• It will be important to no analyze current state of revenue and efficient M.Cap relations, but also build a live prediction models taking into account that protocols are quite transparent systems, and the only step to get it done is to have a deep understanding how everything works and process the data fast (we’re working on it)

Our vision on the future of token design & analytics:

• The importance of building institutional reliability, foundational research, and monitoring token health cannot be overstated
• The tokenomics language must interface with TradFi concepts, and the explanations must withstand regulatory scrutiny
• Tokenomic models will be judged based on value sustainability (or revenue sustainability). Novel design is not the only path to success
• Token analysis must demonstrate the interdependencies of mechanisms. Metrics alone are insufficient without the context of value flows
• Narratives based on fundamentals are more important than CT KOL noise (CT doesn't matter for retail)
• Comparative analysis is as important as absolute analysis. It reveals relative strength, value capture per unit of risk, and mechanism efficiency when comparing similar tokens

In closing, none of this can be done manually. To scale token analytics in 2026, we need to apply AI and automated data analysis.

Disclaimer:
This document is provided solely for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute, and should not be construed as, investment advice, financial advice, legal advice, or any offer, solicitation, or recommendation to acquire, dispose of, or transact in any digital asset or financial instrument. The information contained herein is based on sources believed to be reliable but is provided “as is” without any representation or warranty of any kind. Digital assets involve substantial risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results. Readers are solely responsible for conducting their own due diligence and seeking independent professional advice prior to making any investment or financial decisions.