At the start of 2025, the DeFi track is experiencing a subtle shift — token holders who could only "follow along" before are finally getting a taste of the rewards.

Let's start with the leader of decentralized exchanges. Uniswap has officially activated its fee switch mechanism, meaning protocol revenue is no longer directed entirely to liquidity providers. Instead, a portion is used for direct buybacks and UNI token burns. What does this mean? The higher the activity of on-chain trading, the more protocol revenue is generated, and the more direct returns token holders receive — value capture transforms from paper promises into real mechanism design.

Lending leader Aave is not sitting idle either. They announced a $50 million token buyback plan while using the Umbrella upgrade to control the pace of new token releases. This combination of moves both supports secondary market demand and alleviates inflationary pressure. Established projects have finally figured out how to make token economics healthier.

Mantle, as a Layer 2 newcomer, is also exploring similar token value mechanisms, attempting to let ecosystem participants share in the dividends of network growth. The wave behind this reflects the maturity of the entire DeFi market — evolving from pure liquidity incentives to genuine value distribution, and token economics theory is moving closer to reality.