In 2026, the crypto world started to heat up right from the beginning. LUNC repeatedly fluctuated around $0.000043. Behind all this was a surprising move by a major trading platform on New Year's Day — they burned 53.3 billion tokens in one go, triggering a 20% surge that very night. The entire community was buzzing, but this is far more than just hype.

The real story lies in the deflation mechanism. From the lows of 2022 to now, the community and exchanges have collectively burned over 436 billion LUNC tokens, and the burn rate is accelerating — every transaction adds fuel to the fire, with tax mechanisms and periodic burns continuously speeding up this process. This is not just show; it’s real deflationary pressure.

But here’s a key question: can simply burning tokens be sustainable? The answer is no. Savvy players have long shifted their focus to hardcore projects within the DeFi ecosystem — like ListaDAO. Why focus on it? Because once deflation reaches a certain point, the competition is about ecosystem resilience and risk control.

ListaDAO has been quite aggressive in these areas. It previously resolved the de-pegging crisis of the USDX stablecoin — an operation still used as a teaching example today: at that time, related borrowers’ interest rates soared to 800%, yet they refused to repay, causing market panic. ListaDAO immediately deployed flash loans, liquidated over 3.5 million USDX, recovering 2.9 million USD1, directly locking in the risk. Then it launched an emergency vote on LIP-022, where veLISTA holders unanimously approved adjusting the oracle price, killing the crisis in its cradle.

This level of operation demonstrates a truth: in the wave of deflation, those who survive are not projects that only burn tokens, but those that understand economic design and have a robust risk control system. Burning LUNC is just the foundation; real growth depends on application layers like DeFi to carry the momentum.