no crypto startup should feel pressured to do buybacks. in normal tech this would be insane. high growth startups should be reinvesting capital and preserving runway, not blowing it in the open market to placate a couple loud reply guys the popularity of buybacks - and in some sense, the expectation by the market that every revenue positive protocol will do them - is unequivocally bad for the crypto startup ecosystem. founders should be focused on their users, product, and team - not managing a perpetual twap buybacks are a symptom of a more fundamental malaise we find ourselves in as an industry. most tokens are worthless. the average app token is just a memecoin wearing a suit. it has “utility” but no ownership of anything meaningful token holders have finally grown wise to these schemes and now as a result demand buybacks. why be forced to trust the team to steward a protocol’s capital when they can just immediately return it to investors via buybacks? the shorter the lag between revenue in and buybacks out, the better this approach is fine for later stage teams. buybacks make sense for protocols like pump & hyperliquid that print money and may have no other productive place to park all that cash. but for your run of the mill crypto startup, buybacks are at best a distraction and at worse a waste of precious resources the pendulum is finally starting to swing away from buybacks, as evidenced by helium’s decision to pause part of their buyback programme. metadao will only accelerate this shift teams that launch ownership coins on metadao feel no pressure to do buybacks bc investors have actual ownership. this means ownership coin founders don’t need to virtue signal to their holders; instead they can focus on the important stuff - product, users, team buybacks are a pre futarchy phenomenon