TLDR
- ENA surged 23% in 24 hours, trading around $0.16–$0.17, and has doubled in price over the past week
- The Ethena Foundation bought out locked tokens from early seed investors who sold ENA in the past nine months
- Monthly VC unlock schedule has been removed to cut future selling pressure
- A governance vote is live to use protocol revenue to buy back ENA tokens
- USDe surpassed $320 million on Robinhood Chain within 8 weeks, making up 42% of the chain’s stablecoin supply
Ethena’s ENA token jumped 23% on Thursday as the Ethena Foundation announced a major overhaul of the token’s economics. The move came alongside a broader crypto market rally, with Bitcoin pushing above $80,000.
ENA was trading at around $0.16–$0.17 at the time of writing. The token has now doubled in price in just over a week.
The Foundation confirmed it bought all locked tokens from certain large seed investors who had sold ENA over the past nine months. These were investors who held more than 0.25% of total token supply. The transactions were done OTC over the past two weeks.
We are excited to announce four updates regarding the Ethena ecosystem, further details on each point are provided in the blog linked below:
1. Buyout of early investors:
The Ethena Foundation executed a buyout of all locked tokens from certain major seed investors that sold any…— Ethena Foundation (@EthenaFndtn) August 27, 2026
The buyout directly targets a long-running concern around monthly investor unlocks adding sell pressure to ENA. By removing that scheduled release of tokens, the Foundation aims to reduce supply hitting the market each month.
Team tokens are not affected. They remain locked under their original vesting schedules.
Revenue Buybacks Enter the Picture
A governance proposal is now live that would introduce a “fee switch.” Under this plan, net revenue from all Ethena-branded businesses would be used to buy back ENA tokens on a programmatic basis.
The buybacks would scale up as USDe’s circulating supply hits set milestones. Once USDe reaches $7.5 billion in circulation, 95% of net revenue would go toward ENA purchases, with 5% going to growth funding.
The Ethena Foundation and Ethena Labs have also reached a Master Framework Agreement in principle. Under it, substantially all intellectual property and economic value from the Ethena protocol would belong to the Foundation and token holders, not equity investors in the Labs entity. The agreement is expected to be published in October.
USDe Growth on Robinhood Chain
Analyst Mesh, cited by crypto analyst account Wu Blockchain, noted that USDe’s growth on Robinhood Chain was driven by infrastructure design and Steakhouse Financial’s choice of Ethena as the primary collateral issuer for Robinhood Earn. Around 62–65% of liquidity in the Steakhouse USDG Vault flowed into the USDe/USDG Morpho market.
Ethena’s USDe Surpasses $320 Million on Robinhood Chain Within 8 Weeks of Launch, Accounting for 42% of the Chain’s Stablecoin Supply
According to Token Terminal data, Ethena’s USDe surpassed $320 million on Robinhood Chain within eight weeks of launch and currently accounts for… pic.twitter.com/Zvvtz5Tbgn
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) August 28, 2026
USDe has crossed $320 million on Robinhood Chain within just eight weeks of launch, now accounting for 42% of the chain’s stablecoin supply, according to Token Terminal data.
Despite this week’s gains, ENA remains down over 15% year-to-date. The CME added Ethena to its single-asset cryptocurrency benchmarks earlier this week.
