DeFi protocols generate fees from lending, trading or staking. Their governance tokens are frequently valued on those fees. Whether the token actually receives any of them is a separate question with a concrete answer per protocol.
Why the distinction is not academic
A token receiving a share of revenue has something resembling a cash flow, and can be valued against it. A token holding governance rights alone is valued on the expectation that the right to direct a protocol is worth something — which is real, and far more reflexive.
The two trade similarly in a bull phase and diverge sharply when revenue falls, because only one of them had a floor.
The fee-switch pattern
Many protocols have a dormant mechanism for routing fees to holders, subject to a governance vote. That produces a recognisable dynamic: the token is priced partly on the possibility of a switch being flipped, which is a governance outcome rather than a market one.
It also means an announcement can reprice the asset without any change in the underlying business — the same asymmetry as an announced supply change, and the same caution as in the halving applies once it is scheduled.
Structural features they share
No options book, so leverage-layer positioning. Concentrated holdings from early allocations, so concentration is the relevant risk measure. And vesting schedules that are published in advance.
The correlation trap, specifically
Protocol revenue rises with market activity, and market activity rises in exactly the conditions that lift every crypto asset. So the fundamental and the beta point the same way, which makes these tokens look like they have idiosyncratic drivers while behaving as high-beta market exposure.
The differentiation appears in downturns, and by then it is a drawdown rather than a diversification.