> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.solanahorizon.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # An Analysis of Sanctum's CLOUD-8 Proposal & Ticker Change - URL: https://www.solanahorizon.com/an-analysis-of-sanctums-cloud-8-proposal-ticker-change/ - Published: 2026-09-07T22:07:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-08T01:39:58.000Z - Description: If the goal is to make the token as strong as the protocol behind it, I’d rather see Sanctum use the assets, brand equity, and community it already has to grow the pie - Author: Bart Hillerich - Tags: Sanctum, Opinion After a full year of touting that CLOUD would become a [bigger focus of the team](https://docsend.com/view/puyk2ytc9riqjzc3?ref=solanahorizon.com), [Sanctum](https://www.solanahorizon.com/tag/sanctum/) has put forth CLOUD-8, a governance proposal to burn the remaining 259M tokens in the Community Reserve, reducing supply by a quarter from 1B to \~741M. The move comes as the team simultaneously announced they'd be changing their governance token's ticker from CLOUD to SANC. In this article, I'll dive into my thoughts on each update from what is now Solana's #1 protocol by TVL, concluding with steps I'd take to fix the problem at hand. > [Read the full proposal](https://research.sanctum.so/t/cloud-008-should-sanctum-burn-1-4-of-total-cloud-supply/2001?ref=solanahorizon.com) [Sanctum Changes CLOUD Ticker to SANC, Proposes 259M Token BurnThe Solana liquid staking protocol is moving from CLOUD to SANC while asking governance to remove 259 million reserve tokens from supply.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/icon/Group-1321322652-f06bf7a1-3392-4e5f-bc63-762b1f5bd917.png)Horizon | Solana News, Insights, StoriesBart Hillerich![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/thumbnail/ChatGPT-Image-Sep-3--2026--02_31_04-PM-e8ba6047-5e18-40ee-8460-c184ce27046a.png)](https://www.solanahorizon.com/sanctum-changes-cloud-ticker-to-sanc-proposes-259m-token-burn/) ## First, The Problem In case you're not familiar with the matter at hand, Sanctum is one of Solana's most fundamentally strong protocols, and just recently became #1 in Solana TVL rankings after growing for eleven consecutive quarters. This, however, has somewhat infamously not translated into CLOUD token performance. CLOUD is down 51% YTD, having declined 94% overall since peaking in November 2024. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-1.png) CLOUD Price History The problem becomes more apparent when comparing Sanctum & CLOUD to other top Solana protocols: | Metric | Sanctum | Jupiter | Kamino | Jito | | ----------------------------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | ----------- | | **Token Market Cap (FDV)** | **$32.2M** | **$1.748B** | **$249.0M** | **$445.8M** | | **Protocol TVL** | **$1.859B** | **$1.814B** | **$1.409B** | **$1.073B** | | **Market Cap : TVL Multiple** | **0.017x** | **0.96x** | **0.18x** | **0.42x** | The valuation gap is pretty dramatic: Sanctum is trading at \~0.02x TVL, versus 0.18x for Kamino, 0.42x for Jito, and 0.96x for Jupiter. Put differently, Sanctum's FDV/TVL multiple is roughly 10x lower than Kamino, 24x lower than Jito, and 56x lower than Jupiter. All four are governance tokens from top DeFi protocols. So, the comparison is as good as it gets. You can either view this as Sanctum being undervalued or the others being quite overvalued. From my Crypto Twitter observations over time, I've seen more people align with the former than the latter. Opportunity is here, and the Sanctum team certainly, from my POV, deserves to see that gap closed. Now let's get into the proposal. ## The Community Reserve Burn The token burn is just such a head-scratcher for me. At this point, it's pretty unanimously accepted in the industry that token burns do very little for long-term token health & performance. And there's been an enormous amount of debate here. Because of Hyperliquid's success, token buybacks (and, to a lesser degree, burns) were a main-stage debate last year across conferences. When it comes to buybacks more specifically, I personally align with Viktor Fischer's [stance from Breakpoint 2025](https://x.com/RockawayX/status/2013976710065111438?s=20&ref=solanahorizon.com). Buybacks aren't inherently bad, and when they're driven by revenue and clear PMF is achieved, thumbs up from me. But that being said, buybacks outside of Hyperliquid's seem to always fall short of their intended mark. Jupiter provides a clear case study here that has been referenced numerous times across CT, conferences, etc. In 2025, the team spent over $70 million on JUP buybacks, but the token fell nearly 90% by year-end. Earlier this year, the team actually [halted buybacks](https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560605130545?ref=solanahorizon.com) to instead use the funds for business growth. Their viewpoint is pretty clear that, instead of lighting $70 million on fire, they could build their team and product, and the long-term result of doing so will create a better business that can better address the token's performance. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-3.png) But to make matters worse with the CLOUD situation, what's in the proposal isn't a revenue-driven buyback; it's a straight-up token burn from reserves currently outside public circulation. This takes me way back to the 2021 crypto bull run. These types of burns were executed to fire up some hype among holders, but had little impact other than a short-term pump. At best, it was a marketing gimmick. At worst, it was a final act before the devs rugged, helping them squeeze out a bit more profit. In part, because of this, this type of move is widely accepted as a negative. So much so that you can easily find blog content from teams like Injective and Tangem that explain: > *"A burn alone does not create value. It simply reallocates value among the remaining holders."* > *"Burning tokens without increasing demand or utility does not create sustainable value and may distract from fundamental development... Burns do not address governance or adoption challenges. Strong tokenomics require more than supply manipulation alone."* > *"Many projects boast about burning billions of tokens that were sitting idle in a foundation wallet, unissued, or locked. Burning tokens that were never part of active circulating supply or market liquidity has zero economic impact."* Even just Googling a question like "Isn't it true that crypto token burns don't really work" will return information that outlines the accepted realities of the type of burn that is being proposed for CLOUD. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-4.png) So, it's honestly really puzzling to me. How could a team that's so experienced, tends to execute so well, and has had a year of focus internally to make token decisions, decide that a token burn is the right move? Surely, there are far better uses for $9 million+, right? This, I'll outline in a later section. ## The Ticker Change The most hyped token in the crypto market today is [$AI](https://x.com/search?q=%24AI&src=cashtag%5Fclick&ref=solanahorizon.com), and has been for about the last two to three weeks. Want to know one of the primary reasons why? The ticker. You can type into your X search bar "$AI Ticker" and see plenty of posts touting the ticker, explaining how important it is, and being bullish on it. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-5.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-6.png) For anyone who's been logged into CT these past two weeks, they've seen this. The takeaway for readers here is that the ticker matters, and we've seen that in numerous cases across the years. In my opinion, CLOUD is an S-tier ticker. Quite frankly, throwing it away is a marketing & branding travesty. - Sanctum has built its brand identity around Albus, its Cloud mascot, and Cloud imagery - CLOUD is very easy to remember and easy to say - Cloud aligns with the brand's "delightful" and carefree nature, and the protocol's core values - CLOUD stands out as a ticker because it's an actual word. See it on a tool with the cute Sanctum cloud logo, and it's simply such a great brand-aligned fit With CLOUD, the potential, fully unified brand funnel that can continue to be developed is: ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-12.png) And it goes beyond these points into spoken language as well. What sounds better to you? "CLOUD" or "SANC"? Which reads easier? I understand this may sound very granular or too nitpicky, but from a global adoption standpoint, they matter. And we have a live case study playing out before us with $AI and other Robinhood tokens. If you don't believe me here, believe what the market is telling you. The market loves to invest in good tickers. CLOUD is a phenomenal ticker that had top-tier branding across the entire funnel. SANC is not, and it breaks the cohesion of the marketing stack. ## CLOUD-8 Section-By-Section Now I'm going to share some thoughts on what's in the governance proposal itself, getting more granular with line-by-line commentary, where I have something to inject. > "5 years into building Sanctum, only \~48M from the Community Reserve has ever been distributed (45M for Active Staking Rewards, \~3M for INF-SOL Kamino vault incentives). This reflects our prudent approach to managing a valuable resource." The CLOUD proposed for burning is recognized here as a valuable resource. So why throw such a resource away? > "It sends a strong signal to markets and also benefits all existing tokenholders as their share of CLOUD ownership increases." Given what I wrote in the dedicated burn section above, no, I don't think it sends a strong signal to markets. However, CLOUD is up 34% since the announcement, so perhaps I'm wrong here. That said, I do think it's important to consider A) the broader crypto market pumping and B) the small amount of capital required to move CLOUD at this stage (there have been eight buys recorded on DEX Screener above $5,000 since the proposal's announcement) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-7.png) As for the tokenholders' share of CLOUD ownership increasing, this isn't something that provably improves the performance of the token, which is the proposal's goal. My personal view is that adding more tokenholders helps drive better token performance because it creates brand advocates who can help increase further adoption. By giving current CLOUD holders more tokens (which ASR has demonstrated hasn't generated better performance), you're effectively giving the group of brand advocates who haven't succeeded in onboarded sufficient new holders (please don't take offense, I recognize this is an oversimplification and there's plenty that goes into this; I'm not putting this solely on the community) more ownership of the brand as a reward, at the opportunity cost of using the tokens to bring more people in. And that's, to me, the big long-term mistake we've seen with the management of the community reserve. It should have been used to grow the community, which could of course have actually involved giving more tokens to current holders as a reward for their successful advocacy. > "The SEO is also atrocious. Search CLOUD on CoinGecko or CMC and you get Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud news, not Sanctum. Through various conversations with people in the industry, we also realized a disconnect between Sanctum protocol and the token." SEO is a very solvable problem, that's marketing 101\. Therefore, changing the ticker (and sacrificing killer branding) because of a perceived SEO issue makes no sense. But, from what I can see, it doesn't appear that there is actually an SEO issue to the degree that the team is claiming. For example, the proposal uses the search term “cloud token” as evidence of poor search performance. Yet in the screenshot provided, Google’s AI Overview identifies “Sanctum (CLOUD) Cryptocurrency” as the first interpretation of that query. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-8.png) That does not, by itself, prove that Sanctum’s overall SEO performance is strong. AI Overview visibility is different from ranking first in the traditional organic results. However, it does indicate that Google is already associating the CLOUD token with Sanctum and recognizing it as a relevant entity for the query. More importantly, SEO performance should be evaluated against search intent and commercially relevant keywords, rather than isolated rankings for broad or ambiguous terms. “Cloud token” can refer to several different concepts, so the query has mixed intent. Ranking performance for a term like this is therefore less meaningful than performance across searches where the user is clearly looking for Sanctum, CLOUD, liquid staking, Solana LSTs, or the specific products and services Sanctum offers. A stronger SEO assessment would identify the search queries that matter most to Sanctum, evaluate their search volume and intent, and then measure rankings, impressions, click-through rates, organic traffic, and ultimately conversions across those queries. For example, a business selling Italian food would generally care much more about ranking for a high-intent search such as “Italian restaurant in NYC” than for the much broader term “Italian store.” The same principle applies here: the goal should not simply be to rank for any keyword containing “cloud,” but to capture the searches most closely aligned with Sanctum’s products, brand, and potential users. That being said, I did execute some tests more aligned with Sanctum's claims. 1. ChatGPT "CLOUD Token" - [https://chatgpt.com/s/t\_6a9f273fabd481918a98fe8ad7494e42](https://chatgpt.com/s/t%5F6a9f273fabd481918a98fe8ad7494e42?ref=solanahorizon.com) 2. Google "CLOUD Token" on incognito tab - 3. CoinGecko search for "CLOUD" 4. CoinMarketCap search for "CLOUD" For tests 2-3, I've attached the results as images below. Across these tests, Sanctum’s CLOUD token appears prominently and, in all but one case, as the top result. The only exception is CoinGecko’s internal search, where CLOUD does not appear first. That is not actually an SEO issue, however, as CoinGecko controls the ranking logic within its own search product and the listing could potentially be addressed directly with its team. The Google results are more relevant from an SEO perspective. For my search, the CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko pages for Sanctum’s CLOUD token were the highest-ranking organic results, while Google’s results also clearly associated the query with Sanctum and CLOUD. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-9.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-10.png) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c3/51/c351e7b1-5954-41b4-b459-2054fd8f5899/content/images/2026/09/image-11.png) Taken together, I do not see evidence here that CLOUD has “atrocious” search performance. On the contrary, the results suggest that CLOUD has already accumulated meaningful search visibility and entity association with Sanctum across Google, major crypto data platforms, and AI-powered discovery. This is also important when evaluating a potential rename from CLOUD to SANC. A rebrand would not literally reset SEO performance to zero, particularly if redirects, metadata, structured data, backlinks, and migration practices are handled correctly. However, it would still mean rebuilding a significant portion of the brand recognition, search demand, query associations, third-party references, and entity signals that CLOUD has accumulated over time. Instead of producing more content to bolster CLOUD's SEO performance (the blog has 12 CLOUD-focused articles; there should be plenty more), the team is taking a big SEO step back here. ## How to Actually Fix CLOUD At this point, we're over 2,000 words in, so I'll keep this section brief. These are the steps that I'd start executing on to improve CLOUD's position: 1. Start playing the game you're in - Sanctum's public stance on token listings is that they won't pay for them. From a moral standpoint, I agree here, but I also think that enough is enough. It's time to recognize the game you're in and start playing it for the betterment of CLOUD holders. Start going after listings, executing on adoption campaigns in collaboration with exchanges, and integrating the token into additional protocols and chains. Make CLOUD tradable and accessible everywhere. 2. Don't burn the community reserve. Instead, take it over completely (meaning no more community voting needed to use funds) and start leveraging it to grow the Sanctum community without friction. I understand this may be controversial, but with a token that's down so much from ATH, what is there left to be worried about - more selling? It's a significant amount of money that, instead of being thrown away, could be used for points 3 and 4 below, among plenty of other positive-sum actions. 3. Integrate CLOUD meaningfully into the Sanctum mobile app. For starters, replicate the Robinhood playbook; the team's referral program rewarded users with random free stocks and was a massive success. Every app user should begin their journey as a CLOUD holder! From there, build mechanisms into the app that encourage CLOUD holding and usage, with the end goal being to continually drive fresh dollars into CLOUD (that's how sustainable token economies are built). Users could, for example, buy Sanctum merch with CLOUD-back rewards, earn boosted APY for holding CLOUD, and get in-app XP multipliers for campaigns that reflect a "CLOUD Score." There are many, many mechanisms worth experimenting with here. Sanctum mobile app adoption should increase CLOUD adoption and velocity. 4. Start building a global brand fanbase by reversing the ticker change decision, and pour resources into advancing the S-tier branding that you have. Hire creators and marketers who can bring Albus to life across content formats, and push him across platforms like Instagram and TikTok (essentially, take a note from Pudgy Penguins' playbook) to create new brand-centric funnels that drive users to the mobile app. Albus becoming a superstar will be the best ROI on spend that the team has ever had. ## Conclusion I don’t agree with burning the reserve or moving away from CLOUD, but none of this changes my view that Sanctum is a great team with a great product. If anything, that’s why I care enough to write nearly 3,000 words about it. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the burn works, SANC catches on, and six months from now this article looks like a dud. I’d be perfectly happy with that outcome because it'd mean one of Solana's most important, well-intended teams is winning. But if the goal is to make the token as strong as the protocol behind it, I’d rather see Sanctum use the assets, brand equity, and community it already has to grow the pie instead of shrinking it. Either way, I’ll be watching closely and rooting for the Cloudfam.