Crypto projects are losing one of their longstanding justifications for governance tokens that return nothing to holders, according to Ben DiFrancesco, founder and CEO of ScopeLift.
Speaking on an Oct. 7 recording of the podcast Uneasy Money, DiFrancesco said fear of regulators shaped an era of token design in which teams avoided dividends and buybacks because promising either could put them at serious risk of violating securities law. "Now, the good news I think is that that’s changing, right?" he said.
Projects that make money should have a real value-transfer story
DiFrancesco said that if a large protocol makes money, or could make money, and already has a token or plans to launch one, it should be able to explain how value is sent to that token in a way that is grounded in something real.
His example was a protocol that charges a fee and then either distributes that fee or uses it to buy back the token in a programmatic way. He named Uniswap as one of the large projects doing that.
According to a September governance proposal, Uniswap’s protocol fees have been live on Ethereum mainnet since late December 2025 and later on other chains. Those fees are claimed by searchers who burn UNI.
Token price as part of economic security
DiFrancesco framed the issue as one of "economic security." He said a token’s price is a key component of why a system works, and pointed to the risk that the token’s value could fall below what it would be worth to steal the assets the protocol protects.
He also pushed back on teams that argue the token itself does not matter. "I don’t buy that excuse anymore, right? The regulatory excuse is going away," he said on the podcast.
SEC staff FAQ added to the policy backdrop
The discussion took place as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff FAQ from Sept. 25 entered the conversation around token design. That FAQ said that announcing a buyback would not, on its own, amount to a promise of essential managerial efforts if a crypto system is functional.
A Sept. 28 revision added another condition: the system must also have no central party, as Unchained previously reported.
Safe governance dispute was part of the conversation
DiFrancesco’s remarks came during a discussion of Safe, the multisig wallet. On Oct. 4, Safe investor Greenfield Capital said in an open letter that it had asked Switzerland’s federal supervisor of foundations to examine how the Safe Ecosystem Foundation is governed.
Greenfield said it wants independent board members and a board-led strategy review. By its count, Safe accounts held about $30 billion in August 2026, down from $66 billion in January 2024.
A foundation spokesperson told Cointelegraph that it had received no formal inquiry from the regulator and declined to discuss the details of the complaint.
DiFrancesco also praised the Gnosis team, where Safe began, and said tokens now having to explain how they return value reflects a maturing crypto ecosystem.