Add as a preferred source on GoogleTze Donn Ng’s Token Framework Weighs Belief Against Protocol Cash Flow
His framework is qualitative, and examples from Hyperliquid, Pump.fun and Sky show how revenue links can work in different ways.
Investor Tze Donn Ng’s framework divides tokens between community conviction and links to protocol revenue, offering crypto investors a way to examine token economics without predicting which assets will survive.
Ng published the framework Friday, Oct. 30. He calls the first category “belief assets,” whose support comes from collective conviction. His “cash-flow assets” have a visible link between protocol revenue and demand for the token or benefits for holders. The categories and Ng’s classifications are judgments, not a measured test of which assets will last. His examples include Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), Zcash (ZEC), Hyperliquid (HYPE), Pump.fun’s PUMP token, Lighter (LIT) and Sky’s SKY token.
The framework’s discussion of holding times has a limited scope. In a sample of Solana memecoin wallets that bought and fully sold within seven days, the median holding period was about 100 seconds in 2025, down from nearly 300 seconds a year earlier. Those figures describe that group of wallets, not typical holding periods across the broader crypto market.
Protocol revenue can reach tokens without becoming income paid to holders. Hyperliquid allocates trading fees among HLP, deployers and the Assistance Fund. The fund converts its share into HYPE, which is burned, reducing token supply rather than distributing fees to holders.
Pump.fun announced April 28, 2026, that it would direct 50% of revenue to programmatic PUMP buybacks and burns for one year. Its announcement also says PUMP gives holders no right to revenue or distributions. As of Sept. 25, 2026, annualized revenue was $504.04 million, or about $1.38 million per day based on a 90-day average. Those figures measure revenue, not net profit. Custom-pair activity can affect fee and buyback totals.
Sky uses part of its protocol surplus for open-market SKY buybacks. Depending on governance settings, bought tokens may be burned or distributed to stakers, and those settings can change. The different arrangements show why revenue alone does not establish whether token holders receive cash or how a token’s economics may change. Ng’s framework offers a way to distinguish community support from revenue mechanisms, but it does not determine which assets will endure another market cycle.