Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: Renowned Solana trader Ansem stated that the buyback mechanism itself does not create value, but the multiple of token valuation is determined by the "trust premium" between the team and the community. He contrasted Hyperliquid (annual revenue of about $800 million, FDV of about $65 billion) and pump.fun (annual revenue of about $440 million, FDV of only about $1.4 billion), pointing out that both are engaging in large-scale buybacks, but their valuation multiples differ by nearly 50 times.

One of the most enduring narratives in the crypto market is being challenged: pouring protocol revenue into buybacks will raise token prices.

On July 16, well-known Solana trader Ansem (@blknoiz06) published a long post on the X platform, proposing an counterintuitive assertion: the buyback mechanism itself does not create value; what truly determines the multiple of token transactions is the "trust premium" between the team and the community. This post quickly garnered over 469,000 views, 3,240 likes, and 509 shares.

Ansem chose two of the strongest revenue-generating protocols in the crypto industry for comparison. Hyperliquid has an annual revenue of about $800 million, with HYPE's FDV around $65 billion; pump.fun has an annual revenue of about $440 million, with HYPE's FDV around $65 billion; pump.fun has an annual revenue of about $440 million, and PUMP's FDV is only about $1.4 billion. Both teams are using the vast majority of their revenue for buybacks, but their valuation multiples differ by nearly 50 times.

Ansem's conclusion is that the gap is not in revenue scale but in the trust accumulated through team behavior.

Why Hyperliquid and pump.fun Have Starkly Different Valuations Despite Aggressive Buybacks

Ansem dissected the buyback strategies of the two platforms in his post.

Hyperliquid directs 97% to 99% of protocol fees directly into HYPE buybacks and burns. According to CryptoNews data, as of June 30, Hyperliquid's cumulative protocol revenue has surpassed $1 billion, with an annualized operating rate approaching $840 million. The platform has burned over 41 million HYPE tokens, worth over $1 billion, reducing the circulating supply by about 4.2%. As of the time of writing, HYPE is priced around $60 to $67, with an FDV of approximately $57 billion to $62 billion.

pump.fun is equally aggressive. In 2025, the platform's total revenue is expected to be around $970 million, with nearly 100% of revenue allocated to PUMP buybacks, totaling approximately $213 million in buybacks. In April 2026, the team burned $370 million worth of PUMP tokens in a single transaction (around 36% of the circulating supply) and locked in 50% of subsequent revenues for continuous burns. Yet, PUMP is currently priced at about $0.0016, with an FDV of around $1.4 to $1.7 billion.

While pump.fun's annual revenue is more than half that of Hyperliquid, its FDV is less than 3% of Hyperliquid's. If the buyback mechanism is the core driving force for valuation, this multiplicity gap cannot be explained.

Ansem's Explanation: The Trust Premium Is the Core of Pricing

Ansem believes that the high valuation given to Hyperliquid is rooted in the trust established by Jeff (the founder of Hyperliquid) and his team.

He listed several points in his post: Hyperliquid has never over-promised; the team focuses solely on product development; user rewards are strictly allocated according to pre-established on-chain metrics without any hidden operations; and the core user base has a very high trust rating for Jeff and the team. Ansem stated that this trust premium "is a major reason why the token is trading so well."

Hyperliquid's historical actions indeed support this judgment. The project has not accepted VC investments, with 70% of the total supply allocated to the community; the large-scale airdrop launched in November 2024 fulfilled early commitments; the platform showed resilience during the market sell-off in February 2026, indicating that the user base includes many serious traders who rely on the platform for daily transactions.

The Problem with pump.fun: $1 Billion Revenue, A Promised Airdrop Not Delivered for a Year

Ansem's criticism of pump.fun is more direct.

He pointed out that pump.fun's cumulative revenue has exceeded $1 billion, and the ICO raised another $1 billion, but the promised airdrop to users has never been fulfilled. According to Protos reports, when pump.fun announced the PUMP token ICO on July 9, 2025, it explicitly stated "airdrop coming soon," promising to allocate 24% of the supply to the community. As of mid-July 2026, this commitment has now passed a full year without the airdrop being realized.

Ansem had previously publicly criticized this on June 25: "pump.fun is the only application in the crypto industry that has managed to maintain attention for several years, which OpenSea has not done. But people are angry because they promised a 24% airdrop that they never delivered, and now they are just sitting on cash."

The $370 million token burn in April 2026 was meant to repair trust, but the community's response was counterproductive. Some users believe that the burned tokens should have been used for airdrop allocations, and the burn essentially eliminated the community's rightful share. According to Cryptopolitan reports, the community's general interpretation of this action is "it deepened the distrust."

Ansem made a hypothesis in his latest post: if pump.fun had seriously fulfilled its airdrop commitment and addressed the concerns of core users, the token price might have risen by 10 to 15 times, while trading volume, attention, and platform revenue would have substantially increased as well.