ENA jumps 10% as Ethena opens revenue-funded buyback vote

ENA rose 10.7 percent to $0.17 after the Ethena Foundation opened a governance vote to route 95 percent of net revenue into token buybacks once USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion, according to CoinGecko data as of 8:11 am UTC Friday.

The foundation detailed the fee-switch proposal in a Thursday blog post, saying the automated mechanism would connect protocol-wide revenue to recurring ENA purchases across Ethena's business lines. Voting runs until Sept. 2, with Snapshot data showing 65 votes representing about 14.4 million ENA in voting power cast so far, all in favor.

The buyback share scales from 5 percent of revenue at the $7.5 billion threshold to 20 percent if USDe reaches $20 billion. USDe, Ethena's synthetic dollar on Ethereum, sits near $4.6 billion, down from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion, so the switch stays off until supply climbs roughly $3 billion.

Buyout removes early-seller overhang

The foundation said it spent the past two weeks buying locked tokens directly from seed investors, each originally allocated more than 0.25 percent of ENA supply. Investors who sold any ENA after the Oct. 10, 2025 peak had their locked tokens bought out; only one wallet declined. Investors who never sold received a full-price offer, and none accepted.

"As a result, the investors who have been selling into the market during the relevant time frame now hold no unvested ENA which could be sold into the market in the future," the foundation wrote in its blog.

The remaining investor calendar now ends early. All remaining investor tokens unlock on Oct. 5, 2026, replacing the monthly schedule, while team tokens stay locked on their original vesting. Roughly 12 percent of supply remains locked, all of it team, ecosystem, and foundation holdings. One large holder sits outside the deal: StablecoinX, an ENA treasury company, still holds about 20 percent of supply under a separate lockup disclosed in SEC filings.

Buyback pipeline tied to USDe growth

The fee switch follows a precedent in DeFi: Uniswap's fee-switch proposal sent UNI to a two-month high last November. For ENA, the bull case rests on the sellers being gone, the unlock calendar ending in October, and a buyback pipeline on the ballot. The bear case is that buybacks stay off until USDe nearly doubles, and StablecoinX's stake sits outside the deal.

Ethena's synthetic dollar ranks as the sixth-largest stablecoin with a $4 billion market capitalization on DefiLlama. The foundation says it wants USDe above $100 billion within five years. A Master Framework Agreement due in October hands protocol intellectual property and residual value to tokenholders, with Ethena Labs equity investors receiving neither.

The Snapshot vote still needs quorum. From there, the signal to watch is USDe supply — every dollar it climbs brings the ENA buyback switch closer.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.