Late at night, I was awakened by a message: a major mainstream DEX burned 100 million governance tokens, an asset valued at nearly $600 million. As an observer who has been navigating the Web3 market for years, my first reaction was not excitement but "there must be a story behind this." In this circle, the most common tactic is "burn marketing"—some projects casually burn tokens to create a scarcity illusion and drive up prices. But after spending half an hour reviewing related announcements and on-chain data, I realized this time is completely different.

Remember the trivial attributes of early governance tokens? Nominally "governance rights," but in reality? Besides being able to click "like" on voting pages, holders hardly receive any protocol revenue. The platform makes huge profits, while token holders can only watch and hope—this contradiction of "centralized profit, decentralized dividends" has left many people deeply disappointed in such tokens.

The permanent destruction of 100 million tokens makes logical sense: first, it directly cuts off ongoing selling pressure, alleviating inflation issues; second, it sends a clear signal to the market—we are changing the game rules. From "hollow governance" to "real value feedback," this is not just a numbers game but a shift in the fundamental thinking of DeFi infrastructure.

The most critical follow-up action is the promotion of the fee activation mechanism. Once protocol revenue truly starts flowing to token holders, this once "lacking in popularity" ecosystem asset can demonstrate real value support. That’s why I believe this step is not just a project team’s self-rescue but a wake-up call for the entire DeFi track.