A co-founder of a leading Solana chain DEX recently raised an interesting question—should we continue to spend money on token buybacks?

Last year, this project spent over $70 million on buybacks, but frankly, the token price trend hasn't shown any particularly impressive performance. Would it be more cost-effective to use that money differently?

The community offered a new idea: instead of chasing buybacks, why not use that budget to build a more attractive holder incentive system? For example, increasing staking rewards, distributing protocol assets to long-term holders, optimizing ecosystem reward mechanisms—these solutions can directly bring real benefits to community members while also enhancing token stickiness.

This discussion actually reflects a real industry issue: simply burning money on buybacks doesn't equal creating value. How to ensure community members truly benefit from project growth, and how to design more effective economic models—these are the key factors that determine the project's long-term competitiveness.