Grayscale Names 5 DeFi Altcoins With Real Utility

Grayscale Research has named five decentralized finance tokens it believes offer real value as crypto markets reward revenue and cash flow over speculation. The asset manager flagged Hyperliquid (HYPE), Aave (AAVE), Uniswap (UNI), Sky (SKY), and Maple (MAPLE) in a research report published June 16. Each shows strong relative value based on fundamentals. Why Grayscale Sees Value in DeFi Crypto markets have fallen since January. Grayscale argues in its report that investors can now value many tokens like financial assets rather than commodities. The firm sorts tokens on a spectrum. Bitcoin trades like a commodity, while protocols with recurring revenue resemble cash flow businesses. Since 2023, DeFi protocols have generated nearly $25 billion in cumulative fees from real users. That activity has driven rising on-chain fee revenue across exchanges, lending, staking, and derivatives. Price multiples across DeFi lending have also compressed. Grayscale reads that as maturing business models now trading at attractive valuations. Revenue Now Drives Token Value Protocol revenue alone does not set token value. Grayscale says burns, buybacks, rebates, and staking decide how much reaches holders. By that test, Uniswap and Hyperliquid stand out. The report says both return almost all earnings to holders through transparent DeFi payout models. Projects like UNI and HYPE distribute almost 100% of earnings back to token holders. Hyperliquid routes trading fees straight into buying and burning HYPE. That model helped lift it into the top 10 by market cap this year. Aave sits alongside them as the largest DeFi lender, after Grayscale called the AAVE token undervalued near $75. How the Tokens Stack Up HYPE trades near $72, ranking as the 10th-largest crypto and well ahead of its peers over the past year. UNI sits around $3.30 after a 9% daily gain, with its value tied to fee distributions back to holders. SKY trades near $0.06, where Grayscale says its onchain collateral-backed stablecoin keeps finding product-market fit. Maple rounds out the list through institutional lending, which the firm says has delivered strong risk-adjusted returns. crypto is repricing from narrative fundamentals Protocols with real revenue, disciplined capital allocation, and transparent token economics are outperforming Grayscale flags HYPE, AAVE, UNI, SKY, and MAPLE as showing strong relative value on this basis, Grayscale stated. The throughline is a market repricing from narrative to fundamentals. Grayscale says protocols that turn real revenue into token value are pulling ahead.