Written by: Forbes

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

"In the crypto space, through digital assets, volatility has been 'killing'."

Andrey Didovskiy said this. He is the CEO of Seasons. This protocol built on Solana has been directly sending gold and Bitcoin to strangers' wallets twice a week since last December.

"As entropy increases, AI and fragmentation make the world more chaotic, humans are still looking for stability." He stated in an interview, "It's an old story."

The mechanism is simple: a threshold. Didovskiy said, "Any wallet address that holds more than 10,000 tokens will become a node on the network, which essentially means unlimited speculation." 10,000 SEAS tokens are worth about $2,500 at recent prices. Every Wednesday and Sunday, this wallet will receive a payment consisting of Tether Gold, packaged Bitcoin, and an interest-bearing dollar token.

"You can also think of it as miners," he said, "because twice a week, people will receive Bitcoin, gold, and interest-bearing USDC."

There are no staking contracts, nor is there anything that needs to be claimed manually. "We do not force users to perform any freezes, locks, or staking." Didovskiy said. Holders simply keep the tokens in their own wallets, which "become savings accounts."

Note: Seasons is a protocol running on the Solana chain, with Andrey Didovskiy as CEO. It went online on December 9, 2025, and its core selling point is: holding a sufficient number of SEAS tokens can automatically and regularly yield gold, Bitcoin, and interest-bearing stablecoins, transforming one's wallet into a "passive savings account." In short, Seasons aims to provide crypto users with a passive income tool that requires no active operation through the "trading tax + real asset dividends" model, attempting to solve the pain point of "crypto volatility is too great, and ordinary people are unwilling to hold long-term." However, it still fundamentally relies on the trading activity of its own tokens, making it a high-risk experimental project.

Where does the money come from?

Seasons operates on three engines, with the one that truly works being the "transaction transfer tax" defined by the protocol itself. Didovskiy stated bluntly, "All trading activities are subject to a 10% fee, which is then directly redistributed to the nodes."

There is a 10% charge for buying and another 10% for selling, and this money is distributed to those who already hold tokens. The gold deposited into node wallets on Sundays actually comes from taxes paid by others during trades a few days earlier.

He does not consider this his invention. He traces it back to the token designs from the previous cycle: trading volume can boost the token's own market value. "Usually, those are inflation models," he said, "we use this as a foundation."

The other two engines are smaller in scale. One module called SSYM will first place the funds to be distributed into interest-bearing stablecoins. There is also a treasury that deploys reserves into lending and liquidity strategies, with the next plan targeting Kamino (the largest lending market on Solana). "Since you already have this value storage, why not let it work?" Didovskiy stated. He also admits that this will bring "new risks, new things."

The numbers behind the yields

Seasons publishes its data weekly, and the figures are not exaggerated. As of the week of July 24, the protocol reported a total distribution of $242,624 since its launch, with $7,433 for that week, covering all 339 node owners. It claims an average annualized return of about 12.56%, having distributed 8.28 ounces of gold and slightly over half a packaged Bitcoin.

Looking at the token itself, on Thursday the SEAS trading price was approximately $0.25, with a fully diluted valuation close to $250 million, and a 24-hour trading volume of about $6,500 (data from CoinGecko). It launched on December 9, 2025. The circulating supply has not been reported, so CoinGecko has not listed its market value at all.

Based on a daily trading volume of $6,500, a 10% tax could generate about $650 per day. This is roughly on par with the actual distribution scale.

The cost of entry is another matter. A 10% fee on entry and another 10% on exit totals nearly one-fifth of the position. Based on the advertised returns, a node would need to rely on a year and a half of biweekly dividends just to break even, not counting fluctuations in the token price itself. Distributing the $242,624 since launch across 339 nodes averages around $715 per person.

Solscan shows that there are about 7,000 SEAS holders. Only 339 have reached the 10,000 token threshold. The remaining holders pay taxes when trading but receive nothing in return.

The crypto community has played this game before

Self-taxing transactions and redistributing yields to holders is a hallmark product from 2021. The most famous example is SafeMoon, which launched in March 2021, featuring a 10% transaction tax, with half going to holders and half to the liquidity pool. In May 2025, a jury found its CEO Braden John Karony guilty of conspiracy securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. He was sentenced to 100 months of federal imprisonment and ordered to forfeit about $7.5 million in crypto assets and two properties.

The core of that case was the misappropriation of liquidity (which was claimed to be locked), rather than the tax mechanism itself. Prosecutors alleged that executives retained access to the fund pool and withdrew funds. Seasons has not been accused of similar issues.

Seasons has closed off some obvious failure points. The token runs on the Solana Token-2022 standard, which natively supports transfer fees, rather than the 2021 version that relied on custom contract logic, which could easily encounter problems. RugCheck records show that minting privileges were revoked about seven months ago, and freezing privileges were revoked about eight months ago, so no further tokens can be issued out of thin air, nor can wallets be frozen. Approximately 22% of liquidity is locked. Dividends are paid in gold, Bitcoin, and dollars, rather than the protocol's own tokens—the latter being the reason why most reflective tokens become self-replicating machines.

RugCheck still rated this token as 'dangerous' for two reasons: the small number of holders and the fee allocation itself. On Solana, setting transfer fee permissions can usually be changed later, but it has about a four-day delay.

What does sustainable yield usually require?

"Crazy interest rates cannot be maintained forever." Euler Labs CEO Jonathan Han said on the On The Margin podcast, "I think everyone has learned lessons in the past few years."

Han was referring to the aftermath of the DeFi summer—when protocols used their token emissions to boast triple-digit returns. He also described the newcomers: "Many retail, ordinary people have begun onboarding to look for alternative sources and opportunities for yield." The yield layer of DeFi has been rebuilt after several hacking incidents, and enthusiasm for high return numbers has clearly cooled.

Seasons does not issue its own tokens, which is a point Didovskiy repeatedly emphasizes. But the money is still internal. Streamex also pays out yields on tokenized gold, and its CEO Henry McPhie has clearly outlined where the money comes from: "We are not leaving gold idle in a bank vault; we are putting it to work."

"We lend gold to those who need it as operational capital," he said, listing borrowers including jewelers and refiners. They pay rent to borrow gold, and pay back in gold, which turns that part into yield. The money comes from outside the token. Seasons' money, on the other hand, comes from its own order book.

This is the distinction potential nodes must understand clearly. It runs through the debate of what retail DeFi is really about, and the efforts to treat crypto as a savings tool rather than a speculative tool.

On the asset itself, Didovskiy is betting on the oldest argument in financial history. "If we look at history, gold and Bitcoin will certainly appreciate over time," he said, "this is to provide them with a sense of tranquility."

David McAlvany, who operates a gold platform called Vaulted, stated on the same podcast that the test is permanence. "Will it still be here in five thousand years? Gold, I am pretty sure it will. Bitcoin, maybe it will, maybe it won't."

The failed season

Seasons wrapped its history into numbered seasons. The first season used meme coins for payouts. Holders clearly indicated that those wanting returns did not want meme earnings, so that season was abandoned. The current basket mainly comprises tokenized gold, packaged Bitcoin, and dollar liquidity markets, which is a revised version.

Didovskiy diagnosed the industry even before being asked about the product. "Especially in the crypto, blockchain, and Web3 space, people are usually doing it backwards—they are looking for solutions to problems, rather than solving existing problems," he said.

The problems he identified do indeed exist. Crypto has never provided ordinary savers with a place to sit quietly, so attempts to find something "like a retirement account" have been ongoing. Seasons built an automated one. Whether it can function as a savings account depends on traffic. And with a daily transaction volume of $6,500, traffic is not substantial.

Han pointed out what keeps newcomers away from DeFi lending, mentioning that persistent issue: "They do not want to expose themselves to a multitude of smart contracts, market volatility, and unknown risks."