🥇 Aster has announced that it'll direct 99% of protocol fees toward buying ASTER off the market

And additionally burn an equivalent amount of tokens from its reserves. The market reacted with a rise of more than 10%.

This is a positive signal, but a buyback on its own rarely becomes a driver of long-term growth.

Everyone's quick to compare Aster's new model to Hyperliquid, but what they're overlooking is that HYPE isn't valuable because of buybacks. The primary demand's driven by token utility mechanics – staking, partnership programs, HIP-3, HIP-4, and other ecosystem tools.

A buyback affects supply. But in the long run, price is determined by demand.

😎 Therefore, the next stage of tokenomics development is not simply about linking protocol revenue to the token, but about creating reasons to hold it, use and accumulate.

🤯 A product can nail product-market fit and still watch its token sink

It's a story that keeps repeating itself. The product grows, users show up, revenue climbs, and the token keeps sliding anyway.

Most teams treat this as some kind of anomaly, when it's one of the most common problems in Web3.

But here's the part nobody wants to hear.

Product growth doesn't create token demand on its own, so when there's no link between usage and the token, revenue moves in one direction while the token quietly drifts in the other. You end up with more users, more activity, and a chart that still bleeds.

In a new episode with BeInCrypto, Sergey Novikov, CPO at 8Blocks, breaks down exactly where that link snaps:

🫥 why revenue growth on its own guarantees the token nothing;
🫥 what token-product linkage is, and why it's the real filter when you evaluate a project
🫥 how to tell whether a project needs a token or is just chasing the trend
🫥 why the utility described in the white paper so often does nothing in real life
🫥 the systemic mistakes teams keep making before TGE
🫥 how investors can spot real tokenomics behind a strong product instead of just buying the chart

Pour a coffee, this one's worth it 😎:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-14LejDJgg

Crypto security is becoming its own financial discipline

Most of us know how to handle fiat. Crypto still leaves a lot of people unsure of their footing. Meanwhile the market is growing up, and the industry has started to settle on a clear set of rules.

In a new episode of Safety Talks, the educational project from EarnPark, Sergey Novikov (CPO at 8Blocks) breaks down what matters when it comes to tokenomics and risk:

🫥 what makes tokenomics genuinely good (spoiler: it isn't a flawless unlock chart)

🫥 why utility on paper and utility in real life are two completely different things

🫥 what an investor should look at before TGE to avoid buying a pig in a poke

🫥 the questions worth asking yourself before you ever buy a token

He also shares a checklist every retail investor should run through before stepping into a new asset.

😎 Catch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ODSxl_hOs

Why does tokenomics fall apart after listing?

The bear market usually takes the blame, but the root causes trace back to tokenomics mistakes made before TGE 😎

In our piece for BeInCrypto, we focused on two things that quietly kill a project:

🖼️ flawed distribution that keeps constant pressure on the price;
🖼️ no real use for the token, so investor interest fades the moment the hype does.

We tested this against cases across GameFi, DeFi, RWA, and social, to see what keeps the strong players alive and where the weak ones slip.

Dig into the full breakdown

🖼️ A good idea rarely dies to competition. It dies to its own mistakes

In our new article, we break down six mistakes crypto projects make before the token ever launches.

The kind that no amount of marketing, and no strong product, can fix later.

🔗 Give it a read 😎

Nearly a million people lost money on a memecoin

The guy who made it walked away with a billion…😎

Losses on $TRUMP hit $3.81B, with almost a million people underwater by the end of June. The coin cratered 97%, from a January peak of $75.35 to $1.76 in July 2026, according to The New York Times, citing Nansen.

Meanwhile Donald Trump himself declared 927 pages of income from crypto projects, more than 💲1.4B in total.

Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million

The proceeds went to preferred dividend payouts and to refilling the company's dollar reserve. Strategy is still sitting on 843,775 BTC and $2.55 billion in cash after the sale.

That's less than 0.5% of its total stack, but it's the biggest BTC sale the company has ever made.

😎 What's changing isn't how much they sold, it's how they think about the reserve. Bitcoin used to be something Strategy simply piled up. Now they're openly putting it to work as part of corporate finance, servicing capital, covering dividends, keeping liquidity on hand.

For any company running a Bitcoin treasury, that's a precedent worth noting 😉

A great product doesn’t always mean a great asset 🖼️

🤔 VIRTUALS is the case that proves it. The ecosystem grew, pulled in revenue, brought in users, and most token holders still walked away empty-handed.

In our latest piece, we dig into why token utility isn't the same as investment value.

How incentive structures can quietly reshape a project's whole economy, and what the whole thing says about the wider AI-crypto space.

See what we found

Listing doesn't complete tokenomics, it puts it on trial

The market doesn't care about your spreadsheets. It tests emission vs. demand, liquidity vs. unlocks, hype vs. real utility. And most of what breaks after TGE was already baked in before it.

🗓 Tomorrow at 2 PM UTC we get into this in an AMA with EarnPark.

🔗 Save your seat