PONS at 0.9x vs HYPE at 29x: Why the Gap?

DeFi tokens with buyback mechanisms show huge valuation gaps, with revenue sustainability at the core. A low PE doesn't mean undervalued; PONS's high yield carries short-term hype risk, while HYPE's high PE reflects a market premium for revenue certainty.

Both driven by buyback mechanisms, the market is assigning sharply different valuations to different DeFi tokens.

Using circulating market cap divided by annualized revenue from the last 7 days, PONS, the platform token of Robinhood's on-chain token launchpad Pons, has a 7-day PE of just 0.9x; using the same method, HYPE from decentralized exchange Hyperliquid has a 7-day PE of 29.2x. Both are doing buybacks and burns, yet the multiples differ by over thirty times.

This is not about which one is cheaper. These numbers place DeFi tokens into a pricing language similar to the stock market: how much a protocol earns, how much it retains, and how much actually reaches the token—what the market is willing to pay for that revenue is what truly determines valuation.

Buybacks Are No Longer a Bonus

First, let's clarify: this "PE ratio" is not the same as the PE in traditional corporate financial reports. It calculates circulating market cap divided by protocol annualized revenue, without involving profit, taxes, or shareholder equity—just a rough but intuitive valuation yardstick. Using this yardstick, we can see five completely different situations among top buyback tokens.

UNI from decentralized exchange Uniswap has a 7-day PE of 15.2x and a yield of 4.44%. SKY from stablecoin protocol Sky has 7-day and 30-day PEs both stable at 9.0x, with almost no change. CAKE from decentralized exchange PancakeSwap has a 7-day PE of only 4.8x and a yield of 8.5%. PONS's 24.7% yield is the highest among these five, yet its PE is the lowest.

The difference between 7-day PE and 30-day PE is that they are calculated using annualized revenue from the last 7 days and last 30 days respectively—the larger the gap, the more volatile the protocol's recent revenue. PONS and UNI have 7-day PEs lower than their 30-day PEs, indicating their revenue growth over the past week is faster than the past month and still accelerating; HYPE is the opposite, with its 7-day PE higher than its 30-day PE, suggesting its revenue growth over the past week has slightly slowed compared to the past month.

In the early crypto industry, buybacks and burns often directly boosted short-term token prices—Binance's BNB became a benchmark for top exchange tokens through quarterly burns, and FTT during the FTX era was once sought after for its buyback mechanism. According to crypto data platform DefiLlama, among the 106 protocols it tracks, 55 are now marked as "active buybacks." Buybacks are shifting from a scarce signal to a standard feature, so the market naturally asks the next question: how much is your buyback actually worth?

UNI: From Buying Position to Buying Revenue

For a long time, Uniswap's core narrative was trading volume and market share, but trading volume itself doesn't equal UNI's revenue—fees must first be distributed among liquidity providers, the protocol, and other participants, and only the portion that actually settles at the protocol layer can be considered for value transfer to UNI.

The change came after the protocol fee mechanism and burn contract were implemented. This chain can be summarized as: increased trading activity → higher protocol fees → UNI bought and burned → total supply decreases.

After the launch of Robinhood Chain, the public blockchain under Robinhood, this chain has been significantly amplified. On September 1, Robinhood Chain's single-day trading volume surged to $1.43 billion, a record high, and this wave of trading volume is becoming an important incremental source of Uniswap protocol revenue and UNI burns. This is the logic behind UNI's 15.2x PE—the market recognizes this transmission chain but is also discounting its sustainability.

PONS: Cheap, But Unproven

PONS's 0.9x easily triggers a first reaction of "undervalued." But the real question should be: why is its revenue so high?

Pons is capturing the hottest entry point on Robinhood Chain right now—new token issuance and trading. Under the current mechanism, each trade charges a 1% fee, of which 30% goes to the protocol, and about 80% of the protocol's share is used for automatic buybacks and burns of PONS. By early September, about 29% of the total supply had been burned; in early September, single-day fee revenue once reached about $5.95 million, surpassing Pump.fun.

The problem is that this revenue has not been tested through a full cycle.

This is evident from the buyback data: PONS's buybacks and burns over the last 7 days totaled about $7.93 million, accounting for 88% of the roughly $8.98 million over the past 30 days. In other words, most of the buybacks over the past month were concentrated in the last week. This figure describes a sudden burst of trading frenzy rather than a stabilized revenue baseline.

And there is a clear variable behind this frenzy. The 90-day gas subsidy that Robinhood Chain provides to eligible Robinhood Wallet users will expire on September 29; how much of the current high-frequency trading comes from low-cost or even zero-gas environments will face its first real test then.

Therefore, PONS's low revenue multiple is better understood as a market discount on the sustainability of high revenue, not simply a low valuation. The market's 0.9x is not betting on how much today's revenue is worth, but on how long this token issuance frenzy can last.

Even more intriguing is that Uniswap Labs has already bought PONS. Uniswap itself launched Pools on Robinhood Chain, a launchpad competing with Pons for token issuance and trading users; at the same time, Uniswap Labs has become a holder of PONS.

This shifts PONS's valuation question from simply "cheap or not" to another question: if this token issuance frenzy fades, could Uniswap's PONS holdings become a risk variable in UNI's valuation chain?

HYPE: Expensive, Betting on Certainty

HYPE's 29.2x conversely shows that the market does not simply price based on "more buybacks, lower valuation."

Hyperliquid's revenue comes from core businesses like perpetual contracts and spot trading, with the chain: expanded trading scale → increased fee revenue → larger Assistance Fund → more HYPE buybacks. The market's higher valuation multiple essentially pays for the sustainability of this revenue—betting that Hyperliquid's trading scale will likely remain high in the future.

It's worth noting that HYPE's 7-day PE (29.2x) is slightly higher than its 30-day PE (24.5x), indicating its revenue growth over the past week has slightly slowed compared to the past month—the market is willing to pay for the certainty of this revenue, but only if the revenue itself doesn't keep decelerating.

Both are buybacks, but PONS's high yield corresponds to a wave of hot money not yet tested through a cycle, while HYPE's low yield corresponds to the premium the market is willing to pay for certainty. This is why looking only at buyback amounts can easily lead to wrong conclusions.

SKY and CAKE: Another Path

SKY doesn't make money from high-frequency trading; its revenue comes more from stablecoin and real-world asset (RWA) allocation yields, with a portion used for buybacks and staking incentives, keeping its PE stable around 9x with minimal fluctuation.

CAKE is another model—revenue comes from multiple business lines including AMM, stablecoin swaps, and prediction markets. In August alone, 2.746 million CAKE were burned, with a net reduction of about 2.072 million, maintaining a declining total supply for 36 consecutive months. CAKE's 4.8x doesn't mean it's undervalued; it's more like the market pricing a protocol that has proven over three years it can sustain supply contraction, with a lower premium than HYPE.

Low PE Doesn't Mean Cheap

There's a similar counterintuitive phenomenon in traditional markets. Investment guru Peter Lynch once proposed that cyclical stocks should be bought when PE is high and considered for sale when PE is low—because cyclical stocks' earnings peak at the top of the cycle, pushing the PE denominator to its maximum, resulting in the lowest multiple of the entire cycle, which is precisely the market's early warning that "this earnings can't last long." It's not cheap; it's an alarm.

DeFi tokens are now replaying similar logic. PONS's 0.9x today is more likely not the market mispricing, but the market already pricing in the judgment that "this token issuance hype won't last long"—the same logic as selling cyclical stocks at earnings peaks. Conversely, HYPE's 29x today may not be expensive: if Hyperliquid's revenue can indeed keep growing, this multiple is a reasonable pricing of future cash flows.

PONS's high yield today is essentially the market casting a yet-undecided vote on how long this token issuance melee on Robinhood Chain can last. And Uniswap Labs has already placed its position on this vote—meaning UNI, originally priced on protocol fees, is now indirectly tied to an asset that hasn't been tested through a full cycle.

When using PE to measure buybacks, what's really worth watching is not who is cheaper, but whose revenue can stand the test of time.

PONS's 0.9x today bets on how long this token issuance frenzy on Robinhood Chain can last; HYPE's 29x bets on how long perpetual contract revenue can be maintained. The former needs to prove it's not a short-term carnival, and the latter needs to prove it deserves the certainty premium.

And Uniswap Labs now stands at the intersection of these two pricing logics: on one hand, it earns UNI protocol revenue through trading activity on Robinhood Chain, and on the other, it holds PONS. If PONS ultimately delivers a negative answer, could the risk travel through this position and shake market confidence in UNI's 15.2x revenue multiple?