Chainfeeds Summary:
In the long run, what truly determines returns remains three things: sustainable cash flow, a disciplined token economic model, and a reasonable purchase valuation.
Article source:
https://x.com/marcarjoon/status/2020853641465254300
Article Author:
Marc Arjoon
Opinion:
Marc Arjoon: The best-performing sectors are "Buyback Leaders" and "Perps." Buyback leaders are essentially those high-revenue projects that use excess profits to buy back tokens. In this category, Sky Ecosystem performed best, while in the perps sector, Hyperliquid almost unsurprisingly dominated—a typical high-revenue, highly resilient sector. Hyperliquid's revenue showed almost no significant collapse throughout the cycle. Both types of applications share the commonality of token buybacks, but the truly key metric is sustainable revenue. While perps and lending activities are typically most active in bull markets, they also offer some defensiveness during downturns. Perps platforms allow users to short, earning fees from short positions; lending platforms can also generate revenue through liquidation mechanisms during market declines, and more importantly, they are often seen as relatively safe havens in bear markets. Furthermore, these two sectors are gradually expanding into less correlated asset classes (such as RWA), and the medium-term logic remains valid. Meanwhile, the two worst-performing sectors were the modular technology track and the Solana ecosystem. Ironically, these two fundamentally different directions became the sectors with the largest declines, but the reasons are quite clear. Modular protocols have yet to find a true product-market fit (PMF). Their representative token, TIA, has fallen by 90%. Celestia's circulating market capitalization once exceeded $2 billion at the beginning of last year, but it only generated about $270,000 in actual revenue over the next 12 months. Its monthly revenue plummeted from a peak of $73,000 in March 2025 to just $1,900 in January 2026. When revenue stagnated, the infrastructure premium quickly returned to reality. For the Solana ecosystem, although on-chain activity remained strong, the high valuations in the early stages of the cycle ultimately led to a significant pullback. In January 2025, Solana applications reached a monthly revenue of $650,000, a figure used as a benchmark for future growth projections, but in reality, that was only a partial peak in revenue. As speculative fervor surrounding Meme coin subsided and improved network efficiency reduced transaction fees, monthly revenue fell to $75,000, currently hovering around $120,000. Revenue declined by 88%, corresponding to an 86% drop in the sector index. [Original text in English]
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