Truly fundamentally supported altcoin projects are already a rare breed.

Looking at the data for 2025 — the fee revenue of the top three DEXs, Uniswap, Jupiter, and Meteora, all surpassed $1 billion, leading the entire DeFi ecosystem by a wide margin. But interestingly, the tokens of these protocols have performed poorly, with significant declines throughout the year. Why is that?

Simply put, high-revenue protocols usually don't buy back their tokens on a large scale with real cash. In their view, tokens are just governance tokens, essentially lacking cash flow rights. This creates an awkward situation — no matter how profitable a project is, if the token's valuation logic doesn't hold, the price naturally can't rise.

So, how to choose altcoins? Prioritize those with genuine buyback or burn mechanisms, exclude those with excessive inflation, and be extra cautious with small market cap or projects lacking fundamentals. Never touch projects that are purely hype-driven concepts — those are the real money-losers.