A Good Opportunity to Buy the Dip? In-depth Analysis of “Real Yield” DeFi Tokens

We examined the DeFi star projects with "real yield"—Ethena (ENA), Pendle (PENDLE), and Hyperliquid (HYPE)—and posed a core question: as token prices decline, do their fundamentals remain strong, or is the yield itself under pressure?

The answer is mixed:

• ENA generates massive fees, but almost all of them are recycled as subsidies to maintain TVL, so the protocol's actual "surplus" is negligible.
• PENDLE's fundamentals have deteriorated alongside its price. With TVL plunging to around $3.6 billion, the current sell-off is not a divergence between price and value, but a rational market response to business contraction.
• HYPE is a huge money printer, with annualized revenue exceeding $1.2 billion, almost all of which is used for token buybacks—but its price already reflects winner expectations, and it is currently maintaining growth by cutting fees.

Big picture: The market does offer better entry points, but the "real yield" narrative requires careful scrutiny. ENA is in an over-subsidized state, HYPE is cutting take-rates, and PENDLE is experiencing painful user attrition. It is still too early to declare this as the time to "buy any real yield token on the dip."

"Real Yield" Framework: What Should Be Measured?

When screening for "real yield tokens," it's easy to oversimplify and look for:

"Rising fees + falling token price = value buy-in point."

On-chain data allows us to look deeper. For each protocol, we ask four key questions:

1. Fees: Are users still paying, or has activity peaked and started to decline?
2. Protocol Revenue: What proportion of these fees actually accrues to the protocol?
3. Earnings vs. Incentives: How much is left after deducting token incentives and subsidies?
4. Valuation: At current prices, how many multiples of revenue/earnings are we paying?

DefiLlama conveniently lists Fees / Protocol Revenue / Token Holder Revenue / Incentives for each protocol.

Based on this, we will evaluate Ethena (ENA), Pendle (PENDLE), and Hyperliquid (HYPE)—not to identify the "healthiest" one, but to show where real price-fundamental divergences exist, and where "revenue" is being dressed up by fee cuts or incentives.

Ethena (ENA): High Fees, Thin Profits, Heavy Subsidies

Ethena trades at around $0.28–0.29, with a market cap of $2.1 billion. Its $7.3 billion total value locked (TVL) generates up to about $365 million in annualized fees. However, since the vast majority of fees are recycled as incentives to maintain high yields, the protocol's actual annualized revenue is only about $600,000, leaving almost zero net surplus for holders. Buying this dip is not a value investment based on current profit/loss (P/L), but a structural bet that Ethena will eventually normalize subsidies without causing a collapse in its user base.

Fee and Revenue Overview Ethena's merged USDe contract on Ethereum currently holds about $7.3 billion in TVL. On DefiLlama's fee dashboard, Ethena looks like a machine:

• Annualized Fees: ≈ $365 million
• Cumulative Fees: ≈ $616 million

But the key line is "protocol revenue":

• Annualized Revenue: Only about $600,000
• 30-day Revenue: About $49,000

As for incentives? That's the source of the gap: most of the fee flow is actually recycled into user yields and incentives, so the net yield left for ENA holders is minimal compared to the headline fees.

Pendle (PENDLE): Rational Sell-off

PENDLE trades at about $2.7, down about 64% from its all-time high (ATH) of $7.50. Its circulating market cap is about $450–460 million, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of about $770 million.

Fee and Revenue Overview Pendle's core business is tokenizing yield and allowing users to trade PT/YT pairs. According to DefiLlama's data today:

• Annualized Fees: ≈ $45.7 million
• Annualized Protocol Revenue: ≈ $44.9 million
• Annualized Token Holder Revenue (vePENDLE): ≈ $35.9 million
• Annualized Incentives: ≈ $10.8 million

While the take-rate remains strong (almost all fees convert to revenue), the absolute numbers are shrinking.

TVL Collapse For Pendle, the most critical data point is the rapid contraction of asset scale. While total TVL was previously high, recent data shows it has dropped sharply to about $3.6 billion.

This is a massive reduction in the capital base that generates protocol revenue-type fees. This is not a "price drop while business grows" divergence, but a "convergence": the price crash is because TVL is crashing. This is entirely normal market behavior.

Trap: Cyclical Yield Realization Pendle relies on monetizing on-chain yields. We are now seeing the downside of this pattern. As LSD/LRT yields compress and stablecoin arbitrage returns flatten, demand for locking in and trading yield is rapidly shrinking.

The huge drop in TVL shows capital is fleeing yield trades. Since revenue is a function of this TVL, a 64% drop in token price is rational. With business metrics (TVL) down by nearly two-thirds from the peak, it is absolutely not recommended to go long Pendle in the current environment. The market has correctly identified that the growth phase is temporarily over.

Hyperliquid (HYPE): A $1 Billion+ Revenue Machine Now Cutting Fees

Hyperliquid trades at around $35–36, with a market cap of about $9–10 billion. Its massive engine generates about $1.21 billion in annualized revenue per year, with zero incentive emissions. However, the investment logic is shifting from "pure cash flow" to "aggressive growth," as the team is cutting taker fees by up to 90% in new markets to capture long-tail market dominance. As a result, HYPE is priced at a winner's valuation (about 8–10x price-to-sales P/S), and future returns will depend on whether these fee cuts can successfully drive massive trading volume expansion.

Hyperliquid has now become the largest on-chain perpetual contract trading venue by metrics:

• Annualized Fees: ≈ $1.34 billion
• Annualized Revenue: ≈ $1.21 billion
• Annualized Holder Revenue: ≈ $1.20 billion
• Annualized Incentives: $0 (airdrop not yet confirmed)

Our view:

• The revenue is real,
• there are no obvious incentive emissions eroding the P&L, and users' main focus is on using the product, not just farming for airdrops.
• Almost all revenue is designated for HYPE buybacks and burns via the aid fund.

According to DefiLlama's current data, compared to its market cap of about $9–10 billion, this is roughly 8–10x P/S—not unreasonable for a fast-growing exchange, but by no means at a "halved" undervalued state.

New Growth Areas

The key nuance of this cycle is: Hyperliquid is no longer just "let revenue soar and then buy back." It is now actively taking action:

• Opening permissionless markets via HIP-3, allowing market deployers to share fee revenue; and
• For new HIP-3 markets, cutting taker fees by up to ~90% to guide trading volume in long-tail perpetuals (stocks, niche assets, etc.). HIP-3's public posts and trading documents outline this "growth mode" fee structure.

Summary: What Is Mispriced?

After looking at the facts, we draw some preliminary conclusions:

1. "Real yield" alone is not enough ENA proves that fees ≠ surplus. The protocol shows hundreds of millions of dollars in annualized fees, but after paying TVL costs and user yields, almost nothing is left for token holders. HYPE shows that revenue is endogenous: when the team cuts fees to compete for market share, revenue and its multiples change with decisions, not just user demand. Any "bottom-fishing" screen that stops at "rising fees" will systematically misjudge these projects.

2. PENDLE is a "value trap," not a value buy The data shows a clear collapse in fundamentals.

• TVL has collapsed to about $3.6 billion.
• Revenue is shrinking along with the asset base.
• The token has dropped significantly, but core business usage is also falling sharply. This is not mispricing; it is repricing. The market has correctly discounted the token because the protocol is facing severe demand contraction.

3. Even winners are under pressure The most important timing insight:

• HYPE is cutting fees to grow new markets
• ENA is maintaining extremely high subsidy levels to keep USDe attractive These two signals show that even leading protocols are feeling the pressure of the current environment. If the leaders are adjusting take-rates and incentives, and former darlings like Pendle are facing massive capital outflows, then we are probably not in a period where you can blindly buy any token with fee revenue.

Conclusion

Yes, divergences do exist, but not all are bullish. PENDLE looks like a project whose business is rapidly contracting, validating the bearish price action. HYPE and ENA both still have decent revenue—but their own decisions (fee cuts, subsidies) show that this environment remains fragile.