Grayscale: 15 high-income encryption protocols or undervalued by the market

By Zach Pandl

Other Organiser

original link: https://www.techflowpost.com/article/3220

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For those who follow Clarity Act, the signal is not just whether the bill itself was passed, but whether the institutional funds actually went into these agreements in the weeks following its adoption。

Introduction:Grayscale Research publishes an update listing 15 prior to the chain agreement and comparing the valuation multiples. The core finding is that agreements with large annual revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars are trading in single digits or even one-fold income multipliers, and the market value of Pump.fun, PancakeSwap, Meteora is almost equal to one-year income. Grayscale believes that CLARITY Act may be adopted next month, by which time institutional access to finance will be opened for these DeFi financial agreements. It needs to be noted, however, that Grayscale itself is the firm of encryption regulators, that the conclusion of "underestimation" is consistent with its business interests and that investors should judge independently。

After a long period of bear-marketing, many income-generating chain applications have been quite cheap from the basic point of view。

The majority of the last 12-month income multipliers (renewenue Multiple) have been reduced to a single digit, many or even one-fold. As most agreements do not have significant operating expenses, they appear equally cheap, as measured by profits or cash flows。

Grayscale believes that the potential passage of Clarity Act (most likely next month) will help release these values. The reason is that the law, if landed, would introduce the regulatory framework for traditional finance into encrypted assets, which would be of great benefit to those applications。

Specifically, CLARITY Act will drive the growth of monetized assets and chain finance. The pre-income 15 agreements, however, are almost entirely linked to financial usage or closely related infrastructure (such as prophecies and pledges). Grayscale believes that these agreements will benefit significantly from the chain-based trading activities expected to grow after the adoption of CLARTY Act。

Grayscale's Cheap List: 15 agreements each Look

Figure: The 15th rank of the chain agreement. Data as of 24 June 2026. Source: DefiLlama, Artemis, Grayscale Investments. Exclude items for which data coverage is insufficient. Chainlink was not included because of the existence of both chain and chain income。

The information density of this table is high, and the following is broken down。

"1 times the club": market value ≈ annual income

The most notable four agreements in the table are only one times:

Pump.fun (PUMP)– $459 million over the past 12 months of agreed income and $456 million in market value. A software operation with an annual income of nearly $500 billion with little operational cost, the market value of which is equal to only one year's income, immediately attracts the attention of value investors in traditional markets. But Pump.fun's income is highly dependent on meme currency speculation, and these transactions may evaporate instantaneously when mood shifts. One could be that markets ignore real cash flows or that markets correctly discount unsustainable income。

PancakeSwap (CAKE)- $322 million in income, $425 million in market value, one-fold. The largest DEX on BNB Chain, which operates on multiple lines such as AMM trading, mobile mining, and forecasting markets, has a more dispersed revenue base than Pump.fun and has a solid Asian and Pacific user base。

Meteora (MET)- $62 million in income, $78 million in market value, double. The mobility infrastructure on Solana is also a project created with the participation of Jupiter founder Meow. There is a need to note the team risks associated with the resignation of the former co-founder of Meteora Ben Chow on charges of financial misconduct。

Collator Crypt (CARDS)- $490 million in income, $68 million in market value, double. It is the "consumption and culture" track, which has the lowest profile of 15 agreements。

Middle layer: several digits, real and silver DeFi protocols

Raydium (RAY)- 46 million income, 158 million market value, three times. The core of Solana, AMM, benefited from Solana's ecological trading activities and the issuance of new coins。

Lido Finance- 77 million income, 216 million market value, three times. The largest mobile pledge agreement in the `tools and services' category represents the Staking infrastructure on the chain。

Aerodrome (AERO)- 124 million income, 471 million market value, four times. The Base link with the largest TVL and transaction volume DEX, using ve (3, 3) token economic model with concentrated liquidity, is Coinbase L2 ecological liquidity hub。

Sky (Sky)- 248 million income, 1.241 billion market value, five times. Formerly MakerDAO, a chain lending and stabilization currency agreement。

Jupiter (JUP)- 130 million income, 716 million market value, six times. The largest DEX polymer on Solana has recently exceeded Uniswap and PancakeSwap on a number of occasions。

Ether.fi (ETHFI)- 56 million income, 314 million market value, six times. Restaking。

Lighter (LIT)- 50 million income, 381 million market value, eight times。

AAVE- 125 million in income, 1,169 million in market value, nine times. The largest lending agreement in the chain, Grayscale, in another study, performed a detailed DCF analysis of AAVE, which was a methodological breakthrough in the encryption industry, as detailed below。

High multiple area: payment for narrative and option value

Hyperliquid871 million United States dollars ($) is the highest on the list, with a market value in circulation of 1.45 billion, 15 times. Income was much higher than the second, but the valuation multiplier was not low. The story of Hyperliquid is more than just a lasting contract exchange: the HIP-3 proposal, launched in October 2025, allows third parties to deploy a permanent contract market without permission on Hyperliquid, extending to stocks, commodities, indices and Pre-IPO shares. In March of this year, the Ppp Jones Index authorized a HIP-3 deploymenter to create the first S& P500 sustainable contract product. The peak of the HIP-3 market is $3.2 billion, with a cumulative turnover of about $20 billion. Ninety-nine per cent of the agreed costs were through repurchase flow agreements. Grayscale has launched the NASDAQ-listed pledge ETF (HYPG) for HYPE。

World Liberty Financial- 150 million income, 1.82 billion market value, 17 times. The valuation was significantly higher, reflecting more political linkages with the Trump family and market visibility than basic output。

Uniswap (UNI)- 49 million income, 1,778 million market value, 37 times. Income was the second lowest, with the highest valuation multiplier. This reflects a long-standing structural problem: the premium paid by the UNI holder is primarily the right to govern and the option value of "fee switch" (allocation of agreed income to currency holders) rather than the current cash flow. The market is priced for what it might be, not what it is now。

Clarity Act: Catalyst of these protocols

Graysdale’s argument is not just that these agreements are cheap, but that they are cheap before a regulatory catalyst arrives。

Of the 15 agreements in the table, 12 are in the financial category: de-centre exchange, lending platform, mobile pledge, revenue infrastructure. CLARITY Act (full name Digital Assembly Market Clarity Act, Digital Asset Market Clarity Act) is the regulatory framework targeting these financial uses。

At the heart of the law is the delineation of the boundaries of the SEC and the CFTC and the establishment of a framework for distinguishing between “investment contracts” and “digital goods”. It has given 67% of the probability of passing within a year through the Senate Banking Commission (two of which are from the Democratic Party)。

LOGICAL CHAINS ARE SIMPLE: REGULATORY RULES ARE CLEAR, INSTITUTIONAL COMPLIANCE FRICTIONS ARE REDUCED, CHAIN ACTIVITY AND TVL GROWTH, AND REVENUE FROM THESE AGREEMENTS IS RISING, AND THE CURRENT LOW VALUATION MULTIPLIER IS RE-PRICING。

Grayscale valuation of DCF for AAVE: target $175 per year

The following are from the Associated Study "Guide to Buying the Dip: Valuing Crypto with Cash Flows" published by Grayscale in mid-June。

Graysdale places encrypted assets in a valuation spectrum: on the one hand, purely commercial assets such as Bitcoin, which are priced on supply and demand; on the other hand, agreements such as Hyperliquid and Aave, which have significant income, apply the traditional cash flow (DCF) model。

Analysis framework for Aave:

Aave Labs essentially resembles an unlicensed chain bank that earns interest differentials between depositors and borrowers, plus fees and stabilization currency (GHO) revenues. Grayscale expects Aave to have a profit of about US$ 60 million in 2026 and an operating profit margin of about 50 per cent。

THE FAIR VALUE OF AAVE IS APPROXIMATELY $80-100, BASED ON A COMPARABLE VALUATION MULTIPLIER (20-25 TIMES THE MARKET GAIN) FOR FCST, WHILE THE TRANSACTION PRICE AS OF THE TIME OF PUBLICATION IS ABOUT $75. AAVE'S CURRENT OUTLOOK P/E IS ABOUT 18 TIMES LOWER THAN COMPARABLE FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES。

In the baseline scenario (accelerated monetization, regulatory clarity advanced), Graysdale has set a target price of about $175 a year, an increase of about 130 per cent over the current level。

The valuation of encryption protocols has a number of special issues not covered by traditional tools that require attention:

There are different mechanisms for the return of token values- Repurchase (AAVE), destruction of coins (HYPE), return of fees (CoW) and pledge incentives (CRV), each of which is not effective in transmitting value to the holder。

Special expenditure itemsTHIS INCLUDES SUPPLY-SIDE COSTS (THE PORTION PAID TO LIQUIDITY PROVIDERS), TOKEN EMISSIONS (CONTINUOUS INFLATION DILUTION), AND CAPITAL EXPENDITURE BY DAO。

Uncertainty in legal structure- HOLDING A GOVERNANCE TOKEN DOES NOT NORMALLY IMPLY A LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE RIGHT TO AN AGREED ASSET. DAOS USE DIFFERENT LEGAL FRAMEWORKS TO ALIGN THE OPERATION OF THE AGREEMENT WITH THE APPLICABLE LAW。

Macro background: market segmentation since the Iran War

The following are from Grayscale, a weekly newspaper for the same period, providing macroposition。

Since the beginning of the Iranian war at the end of February, the US stock has risen by 9 per cent (upped by AI spending), Bitcoin by 1 per cent and gold by 20 per cent. BTC and gold run-off are partly due to market expectations that the Fed might raise interest rates to counter inflation – federal fund interest rates are expected to rise by about 60 basis points over a period of one year, and about half of the Fed’s officials believe that the 2026 raise might be appropriate. The ECB has increased interest rates。

Graysdale disagrees with this expectation, and the baseline scenario is that the Federal Reserve remains in place. If the judgement is correct, the BTC price could add up to catch up with the US stock。

The valuation of chain agreements has been further compressed in this macro-risk-off environment, which is also the time window for Grayscale's argument that the Bear City Multiple + Regulatory Catalyst。

How to look at the report objectively

Grayscale ' s picture is indeed a matter of concern: a high-profit agreement with a condensed multi-valuation transaction, a possible regulatory windfall is imminent and the overall market is still in a risk-off state. This is a rare, fundamental, encrypted investment argument in a market that is usually emotional-driven。

But two things must be clear:

First, the catalyst is conditional。The schedule and final form of Clarity Act are not guaranteed. An investment argument based on a legislative event naturally bears the risk of delay or disappointment in that event. 67% of the passability also means 33% of the passability。

Second, Grayscale is a stakeholder。It is a encrypted management company, and the business model is based on increased investor exposure to these assets. It has launched the NASDAQ pledge ETF for Hyperliquid. It came to the conclusion that “it is now an attractive entry point” and should be read in this context of interest rather than as a neutral analysis。

Valuation data are verifiable and unusual and real. But whether it marks the bottom or whether the market correctly prices the risks it sees for itself, is a question that each investor must answer on its own。

For those who follow Clarity Act, the signal is not just whether the bill itself was passed, but whether institutional funds actually flowed into these agreements in the weeks following its adoption – the true validation of Graysdale’s argument。