代币何时会产生收入？乔尔·约翰（Joel John），分散。

本文提出一个简单的问题，代币应该产生收入吗？如果是这样，团队应该回购自己的令牌吗？

Money controls everything around us. When people start discussing fundamentals again, the market is probably in a bad place.

金钱控制着我们周围的一切。当人们再次开始讨论基本面时，市场可能处于一个糟糕的位置。

This article asks a simple question: should tokens generate revenue? If so, should teams buy back their own tokens? Like most things, there is no clear answer to this question. The path forward needs to be paved with honest conversations.

本文提出一个简单的问题：代币应该产生收入吗？如果是这样，团队应该回购自己的令牌吗？像大多数事情一样，这个问题没有明确的答案。诚实的对话需要铺平前进的道路。

This article was inspired by a series of conversations with Ganesh Swami, co-founder of Covalent, a blockchain data query and indexing platform. It covers the seasonality of protocol revenue, evolving business models, and whether token buybacks are the best use of protocol capital. It also complements the article I wrote last Tuesday about the current state of stagnation in the cryptocurrency industry.

本文的启发是与与区块链数据查询和索引平台共同创始人Ganesh Swami进行了一系列对话。它涵盖了协议收入，不断发展的业务模型的季节性，以及代币回购是否是协议资本的最佳利用。它还补充了我上周二写的关于加密货币行业停滞状态的文章。

Private equity capital markets such as venture capital always swing between periods of excess liquidity and periods of liquidity scarcity. When these assets become liquid assets and external funds continue to pour in, the industry's optimism tends to drive prices up. Think of various new IPOs or token issuances. This newly acquired liquidity will allow investors to take more risks, in turn driving the birth of a new generation of companies. When asset prices rise, investors will shift their attention to early-stage applications, hoping to obtain higher returns than benchmarks such as Ethereum and SOL.

私募股权市场（例如风险投资）总是在多余的流动性期间和流动性稀缺时期之间摆动。当这些资产成为流动资产，外部资金继续涌入时，行业的乐观情绪往往会推动价格上涨。想想各种新的IPO或代币发行。这种新获得的流动性将使投资者能够承担更多的风险，从而推动新一代公司的诞生。当资产价格上涨时，投资者将把注意力转移到早期申请上，希望获得比以太坊和SOL等基准的更高回报。

This phenomenon is a characteristic of the market, not a problem.

这种现象是市场的特征，而不是问题。

Liquidity in the cryptocurrency industry follows a cyclical cycle marked by the halving of Bitcoin block rewards. From historical data, market rebounds usually occur within six months after the halving. In 2024, the inflow of funds from Bitcoin spot ETFs and Michael Saylor's large-scale purchases (a total of $22.1 billion was spent on Bitcoin last year) became a "reservoir" for Bitcoin. However, the rise in Bitcoin prices did not lead to an overall rebound in small altcoins.

加密货币行业的流动性遵循一个周期性的周期，标志着比特币块奖励减半。从历史数据中，市场篮板通常发生在减半后的六个月内。 2024年，比特币现场ETF和迈克尔·赛勒（Michael Saylor）的大规模购买（去年总计221亿美元用于比特币）的资金流入成为比特币的“水库”。但是，比特币价格上涨并没有导致小山羊的总体反弹。

We are currently in a period of tight capital liquidity, capital allocators' attention is scattered across thousands of assets, and founders who have been working on developing tokens for years are struggling to find the meaning of it all. "Why bother building real applications when launching meme assets can bring more economic benefits?"

我们目前处于严格的资本流动性时期，资本分配者的注意力散布在数千个资产中，而多年来一直在努力开发代币的创始人正在努力寻找这一切的含义。 “为什么在推出模因资产时会打扰构建实际应用，可以带来更多的经济利益？”

In previous cycles, L2 tokens have enjoyed a premium due to the perceived underlying value, supported by exchange listings and venture capital. However, as more and more players enter the market, this perception and its valuation premium are being eroded. As a result, L2's token value has declined, limiting their ability to subsidize smaller products with grants or token revenue. Moreover, the valuation surplus has in turn forced founders to ask the old question that plagues all economic activities: where does the revenue come from?

在先前的周期中，由于交换清单和风险投资的支持，L2代币由于感知到的基本价值而享有溢价。但是，随着越来越多的参与者进入市场，这种看法及其估值溢价正在受到侵蚀。结果，L2的代币价值有所下降，限制了其通过赠款或代币收入补贴较小产品的能力。此外，估值盈余反过来又迫使创始人问困扰所有经济活动的旧问题：收入来自何处？

How Cryptocurrency Project Revenue Works

加密货币项目收入如何工作

The above diagram explains very well how cryptocurrency project revenue typically works. For most products, Aave and Uniswap are undoubtedly ideal templates. These two projects have maintained stable fee income for many years by virtue of their early entry into the market and the "Lindy Effect". Uniswap can even generate revenue by increasing front-end fees, which perfectly confirms consumer preferences. Uniswap is to decentralized exchanges what Google is to search engines.

上图很好地解释了加密货币项目收入通常如何工作。对于大多数产品而言，AAVE和UNISWAP无疑是理想的模板。这两个项目由于早期进入市场和“ Lindy效应”，多年来一直保持稳定的费用收入。 UNISWAP甚至可以通过增加前端费用来产生收入，从而完美证实了消费者的偏好。 UNISWAP是分散的交换Google搜索引擎的内容。

In contrast, the revenues of Friend.tech and OpenSea are seasonal. For example, the "Summer of NFTs" lasted for two quarters, while the speculative craze in Social-Fi lasted only two months. Speculative income is understandable for some products, provided that the scale of its revenue is large enough and consistent with the original intention of the product. Currently, many meme trading platforms have joined the club of over $100 million in fee income. This scale of revenue is usually only achievable for most founders through token sales or acquisitions. This level of success is not common for most founders who focus on developing infrastructure rather than consumer applications, and the revenue dynamics of infrastructure are different.

相比之下，Friend..tech和Opensea的收入是季节性的。例如，“ NFT的夏季”持续了两个季度，而社交网络中的投机热潮仅持续了两个月。对于某些产品来说，投机性收入是可以理解的，只要其收入的规模足够大，并且与产品的最初意图一致。目前，许多模因交易平台已经加入了超过1亿美元的费用收入的俱乐部。这种收入规模通常只能通过令牌销售或收购来实现大多数创始人。对于大多数专注于开发基础架构而不是消费者应用的创始人而言，这种成功水平并不常见，而基础架构的收入动态也不同。

Between 2018 and 2021, venture capital firms provided a lot of funding for developer tools, expecting developers to gain a large number of users. But by 2024, two major shifts have occurred in the cryptocurrency ecosystem:

在2018年至2021年之间，风险投资公司为开发人员工具提供了大量资金，期望开发人员获得大量用户。但是到2024年，加密货币生态系统发生了两个重大转变：

First, smart contracts enable unlimited scalability with limited human intervention. Today, Uniswap and OpenSea no longer need to scale their teams in proportion to trading volume.

首先，智能合约可实现无限的可伸缩性，并有限的人为干预。如今，Uniswap和Opensea不再需要按交易量成比例地扩展其团队。

Secondly, advances in large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence have reduced the need to invest in cryptocurrency developer tools. Therefore, as an asset class, it is at a "reckoning moment".

其次，大语模型（LLM）和人工智能的进步减少了投资加密货币开发人员工具的需求。因此，作为资产类别，它正处于“估算时刻”。

In Web2, API-based subscription models work because there are so many users online. However, Web3 is a smaller niche market with very few applications that can scale to millions of users. Our advantage is the high revenue per customer. Due to the nature of blockchain that allows money to flow, ordinary users in the cryptocurrency industry tend to spend more money at a higher frequency. Therefore, in the next 18 months, most companies will have to redesign their business models to obtain revenue directly from users in the form of transaction fees.

在Web2中，基于API的订阅模型有效，因为在线有很多用户。但是，Web3是一个较小的利基市场，其应用程序很少可以扩展到数百万用户。我们的优势是每个客户的收入高。由于区块链的性质允许资金流动，加密货币行业的普通用户往往会以更高的频率花费更多的钱。因此，在接下来的18个月中，大多数公司将不得不重新设计其业务模式，以直接以交易费用形式从用户那里获得收入。

Of course, this isn’t a new

当然，这不是新的