In 2026, the DeFi track "Real Buyback": JST has cumulatively destroyed over 1.35 billion tokens, and JUST interprets long-termism with ecological hard power

In the context of Bitcoin's overall downward trend, the continued tightening of liquidity in the cryptocurrency market, and a sluggish trading atmosphere, JST has completed its third round of large-scale buyback and destruction. With a "real buyback" strategy involving tens of millions of dollars, it has managed to break through against the trend, like a ray of light, injecting extremely valuable long-term confidence into the quiet industry. This action not only fully demonstrates its ecological hard power that transcends cycles but also confirms its commitment to long-termism.

Unlike many ephemeral "marketing-style destructions" in the industry, JST's buyback and destruction are deeply rooted in the real profits of the ecosystem. It is a long-term value empowerment plan that possesses self-sustaining capabilities and can operate regularly. As a result, JST has formed a complete value closed loop and a logically rigorous deflation governance mechanism, establishing a truly sustainable and implementable governance system.

Specifically, JST's buyback and destruction mechanism is deeply tied to the real ecological profits generated by the two core business lines of the JUST ecosystem: the lending center JustLend DAO and the stablecoin USDD. Currently, all buyback funds come from JustLend DAO. The entire process is publicly transparent, with clear and traceable funding sources, and every destruction operation is fully recorded on-chain, supporting any verification, thereby ensuring the sustainability and credibility of deflation governance at the underlying design level.

In just six months, JST has efficiently completed three rounds of large-scale buyback and destruction actions, with a total investment exceeding $60 million and a total of 1.356 billion JST destroyed, accounting for approximately 13.7% of the total token supply. Based on a recent market price of about $0.08 per JST, the total value of the JST tokens destroyed in the three rounds has exceeded $100 million.

Three Rounds of Destruction "Real Money" Step by Step, Deflation "Flywheel" Drives JST Price and Market Value Growth

After three consecutive rounds of textbook-level large-scale buyback and destruction actions, JST's deflation strategy has delivered an impressive answer to the market: the total supply has been directly reduced by over 1.356 billion tokens. As the buyback and destruction mechanism of JST continues to normalize, its deflation "flywheel" effect is accelerating, highlighting the token's scarcity and thereby building a strong value moat, providing robust support for the simultaneous steady rise of JST's price and market value.

From the specific destruction trajectory, each round of funding shows a strong upward momentum:

• First Round (October 2025): Breaking the ice, approximately 559 million JST destroyed, accounting for 5.66% of the total token supply, with an investment of about $17.72 million;

• Second Round (January 2026): Exceeding expectations, approximately 525 million JST destroyed, accounting for 5.30% of the total token supply, with investment increasing to about $21 million, including existing profits of $10.34 million and new net profits of $10.19 million added in Q4 2025;

• Third Round (April 15, 2026): As scheduled, approximately 271 million JST destroyed, accounting for 2.74% of the total token supply, with investment further rising to about $21.3 million, including existing profits of $10.34 million and new net profits of $10.97 million added in Q1 2026.

These three rounds of buyback and destruction have cumulatively invested over $60 million, showing a clear trend of gradually increasing "real money": from $17.72 million in the first round to $21 million in the second round, and then to $21.3 million in the third round, with the investment scale steadily climbing. All funds come from the real business profits of the JustLend DAO platform—both existing profits and new net profits each quarter. No token issuance or reserve funds have been used at any point; every investment is a genuine ecological profit reinvestment, fully demonstrating JST's solid ecological self-sustaining capability behind the buyback and destruction.

In addition to the reliable source of funds, JST's operational norms for buyback and destruction adhere to the principles of "openness, transparency, and decentralization" throughout every step. Each round of destruction is strictly executed by Grants DAO according to decentralized rules, and all operations are conducted publicly on-chain.

The cumulative destruction of 1.356 billion JST is not merely a simple accumulation of numbers but a profound reshaping of the token supply side—this means that over 13.7% of the token base has been permanently deleted from JST's total supply, effectively shrinking the circulating supply by 13.7%. With each round of destruction, JST's circulation continues to sharply decrease, and the scarcity value of the token is increasingly highlighted. This positive change is directly transmitted to the market level, driving JST token prices and overall market value to steadily rise, forming a clear, strong, and sustainable upward value trend.

JST's substantial market performance also confirms the effectiveness of its deflation model. Since the buyback and destruction plan officially launched in October 2025, JST has completely freed itself from the constraints of market fluctuations, entering a phase of independent strong growth. According to recent data from CoinGecko, the price of JST tokens has surged from a low of about $0.03 last October to over $0.08, achieving a cumulative increase of over 160%, marking a leap in growth; at the same time, its market value has also risen steadily from an initial $300 million to nearly $700 million, completing a doubling growth breakthrough. This impressive performance of "price & market rising together" is not the result of short-term speculative trading but the highest praise for JST's adherence to the core logic of "real money creates real deflation," as well as the market's high recognition of its long-term value.

Now, with the third round of buyback and destruction successfully implemented as scheduled, this not only marks an important milestone in the mature operation of JST's deflation mechanism but also signifies that JST's "deflation dividend" has officially entered a golden period of accelerated release.

Two Core Engines of the JUST Ecosystem Drive JST Deflation: JustLend DAO's Steady Profit Growth and USDD Supply Expansion

JST's deflation model is not a castle in the air but is deeply rooted in the two core pillars of the JUST ecosystem—the lending platform JustLend DAO and the stablecoin USDD, which generate real profits. The core advantage of this mechanism lies in the hard binding of the destruction scale to the real profitability of the ecological protocol: the higher the protocol's profit, the larger the scale of funds invested in buybacks, and the stronger the deflationary effect.

It is important to emphasize that the "real ecological profits" here do not come from the project team's diversion of reserved funds, nor are they created through token issuance to fabricate a superficial prosperity. They originate from genuine business profits—both the net income obtained by JustLend DAO through core real business scenarios such as lending and staking, as well as the excess profits generated by USDD in scenarios such as issuance, exchange, and interest accrual. Every cent of funding comes from the ecosystem's own business generation, rather than short-term speculation or external infusion.

As well-known crypto KOL DADA previously analyzed: "The JST buyback essentially reflects that the TRON DeFi ecosystem has entered the 'profit realization stage,' where protocol revenues directly flow back to the token value layer through DAO fiscal rules, forming a closed loop. The accumulated buyback scale is directly linked to protocol revenue, resulting in a continuous contraction trend in JST's supply and demand structure. This buyback model driven by real usage scenarios is more certain than designs that heavily rely on 'deflation expectations.'"

According to public mechanism rules, JST buyback funds mainly come from the two core sectors of the JUST ecosystem, forming a dual support of "basic plate + incremental pool":

• Basic Plate (JustLend DAO): The core source of funds, extracting platform existing profits and new net profits generated each quarter, providing stable and continuous funding support for buyback and destruction;

• Incremental Pool (USDD): Source of potential growth, when the USDD multi-chain ecosystem exceeds $10 million, the excess will all be included in the buyback fund pool, becoming an important incremental supplement to the deflation mechanism.

As of the third round of destruction, the USDD ecosystem had not yet reached the $10 million activation threshold, and the funds for the first three rounds of JST buyback and destruction came 100% from the real business profits of JustLend DAO.

As the absolute main force behind JST's buyback and destruction, JustLend DAO has demonstrated extremely robust profitability, further showcasing its strong ecological strength and firm determination regarding the deflation strategy through three consecutive rounds of "real money" increases. Notably, these three rounds of increasing buybacks occurred during a downward adjustment cycle in the cryptocurrency market. This "counter-cyclical growth," which ignores the market's downturn, is entirely due to the substantial increase in JustLend DAO's net profits each quarter, thereby achieving an upward enhancement of buyback efforts, bringing unexpected surprises to the community and investors.

So far, JustLend DAO has cumulatively invested over $80 million in the JST buyback and destruction plan (including executed and pending investments). Among them, approximately $60 million has been completed for destruction, and there are still over $20 million in existing profits on the books, which will be steadily invested in future buybacks. The ample funding reserves are supported by its strong business generation capabilities.

This robust profitability stems from the comprehensive DeFi ecosystem moat built by JustLend DAO. As the core financial infrastructure of the TRON ecosystem, JustLend DAO has formed a full-scenario DeFi solution covering SBM lending, sTRX liquidity staking, Energy Rental, GasFree smart wallets, and other key aspects such as asset storage, collateralized lending, on-chain staking, and Gas cost optimization. The diverse and high-growth core business matrix provides solid support for its continuous profitability and continuously supplies funding "ammunition" for JST buyback and destruction.

Currently, JustLend DAO's overall business continues to maintain a steady growth trend, with user scale and profitability rising in tandem. As of April 16, the total value locked (TVL) on the platform has surged to approximately $6.89 billion, with the number of high-retention users exceeding 480,000, and the ecological influence continues to expand.

According to the latest data from JustLend DAO's financial page on April 16, the platform's cumulative net profit has exceeded $83.64 million. Among them, $80.75 million has been withdrawn, and the profits used for JST buyback and destruction amount to about $80.7 million (including $60.02 million already destroyed and $20.68 million pending destruction), with nearly $2.89 million in reserve profits remaining.

Specifically, the core funding for JST buyback and destruction mainly comes from JustLend DAO's two core businesses: the SBM lending market and Staked TRX liquidity staking. According to DeFiLlama data, the current TVL of the SBM lending market exceeds $3.58 billion, consistently ranking among the top three in the global lending sector, with an asset scale $1.5 billion higher than the fourth-ranked traditional platform SparkLend (formerly MakerDAO); the amount of TRX staked in the Staked TRX business has exceeded 9.53 billion tokens, valued at over $3 billion.

In addition, JustLend DAO also offers frequently used products such as Energy Rental (which helps users significantly save on on-chain Gas costs) and GasFree smart wallets (which allow users to pay on-chain fees using various transfer tokens).

If JustLend DAO is the profit cornerstone for JST buyback and destruction, providing stable support for the deflation mechanism, then the stablecoin USDD is the "second growth curve" that is about to explode, injecting new momentum into JST deflation.

Since the beginning of 2026, USDD has officially entered a period of rapid expansion, with continuous acceleration in ecological layout. On April 8, USDD launched the WBTC vault, allowing users to mint USDD using WBTC as high-quality collateral. This move significantly expands the collateral asset landscape of USDD and enhances its funding capacity, laying a solid foundation for further expansion. As of April 16, the total supply of USDD has strongly surpassed $1.55 billion, and its total market value has steadily entered the top ten in the global stablecoin sector, with the related platform TVL exceeding $2.2 billion, and the ecological scale and influence continue to grow.

Moreover, it is worth noting that according to the Q1 2026 data update, the treasury funds of USDD have accumulated to as high as $13.9 million. In the future, with the rapid development and expansion of USDD, the enormous excess profits generated by USDD will officially convert into substantial incremental funds for JST buyback and destruction, injecting unprecedented strong momentum into JST's deflation mechanism and continuously enhancing JST's scarcity and long-term value.

JUST Interprets Long-term Construction with Ecological Hard Power, JST Value Capture Enters a New Era

By deeply binding the value of JST tokens to the real development levels and profit capabilities of core protocols such as JustLend DAO and USDD, JUST has achieved a high degree of synergy between the overall growth of the ecosystem and the interests of JST token holders. As a one-stop DeFi solution within the TRON ecosystem, JUST's business covers not only lending, liquidity staking, energy rental, and GasFree centered around JustLend DAO but also includes multi-dimensional products such as the stablecoin USDD and cross-chain JustCrypto.

The strong business layout directly translates into leading ecological scale and influence: the asset scale managed by the JUST ecosystem has long ranked first in the TRON ecosystem and has consistently occupied half of the total TVL of the TRON network. According to the latest official data on April 17, the TVL of the JUST ecosystem is approximately $11.6 billion, while the total locked value of the TRON network is $27.3 billion, highlighting its core position.

This strong ecological resilience is particularly evident during the industry's winter, especially in early April this year, when the DeFi lending sector frequently experienced tremors, facing significant crises: on April 1, UX Chain announced its shutdown; on April 3, Drift was hacked, resulting in losses exceeding $280 million; on April 8, Seamless Protocol officially ceased operations. In stark contrast, the JUST ecosystem has shown a completely counter-cyclical steady trend. Its core protocol JustLend DAO has steadily navigated multiple bull and bear cycles since its launch, maintaining safe and stable operations; it has also proven its profitability resilience through actual buyback actions. Notably, the JustLend DAO platform still has over $20 million in existing profits waiting to be invested in subsequent destruction.

It is foreseeable that as the two core ecosystems of JUST, JustLend DAO and USDD, continue to develop, a larger scale of real business funds will be continuously injected into the JST buyback and destruction pool. With the ongoing empowerment of strong self-sustaining capabilities, the deflation flywheel of "ecological profits → token destruction → value reinvestment" will accelerate, continuously solidifying JST's long-term value foundation, and is expected to carve out a solid upward value path amidst the cyclical fluctuations of the cryptocurrency market.