The Ethena Foundation has announced four major ecosystem updates that analysts have described as extremely bullish and long overdue. The most significant development involves the complete elimination of monthly VC overhang - a major bearish factor for ENA in recent months. As reported by the Foundation, the team has bought all locked tokens from major seed investors who had sold ENA in the last nine months, with only one wallet declining the offer. Additionally, team tokens will remain locked as per earlier plans, while the Foundation and lead investors have agreed to eliminate future overhang associated with monthly VC investor unlocks by releasing unvested tokens.
ENA has extended its rally by 12% to a yearly high of $0.189, following the Foundation's announcement of the comprehensive updates. The token had previously rallied 15% on Thursday on the back of the bullish updates, with the move from weekly opening level to peak amounting to nearly 54%. According to AMBCrypto, ENA reached an intraday high of $0.18023 on August 23 before sellers took control. The token's market cap now stands near $1.52 billion, reflecting the significant momentum from the Foundation's buyout announcement and the new revenue allocation proposal. Notably, the community has overwhelmingly supported the new plans with 100% voting in favor, with no 'abstain' or 'against' votes as of press time, making it unanimous support.
The Ethena Foundation has announced a comprehensive proposal to direct 95% of net revenue from Ethena-branded businesses toward ENA purchases once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. Under this governance proposal, the remaining 5% of revenue would be retained to fund ecosystem growth. The Foundation stated that this change is designed to address recurring supply from early investor unlocks and uncertainty over how the protocol's economic value reaches token holders. The proposal addresses a fundamental question in decentralized finance governance: whether revenue generated by a protocol ultimately produces economic benefits for the token itself. As reported by the Foundation, the proposed structure would use revenue for open-market ENA demand rather than leaving the connection dependent mainly on governance rights or expectations of future utility.
The Foundation has announced a fee switch and enhanced revenue mechanisms that could significantly impact ENA buybacks. Currently, Ethena's USDe (yield-generating stablecoin) has a market supply of $4.5 billion and has generated only $1.8 million in 2026. However, if the USDe supply crosses $7.5 billion and annualized revenue hits $450 million, the buyback program would activate. The buyback program would increase if ecosystem growth explodes, with 5% ($22 million) of the proceeds going to ENA buybacks. The Foundation has also announced that ENA will now be aligned with the ecosystem, with brand and intellectual property rights assigned to the Foundation and governed by token holders, with no payouts to private investors in Ethena Labs.
Ethena's yield product, USDe, is set to receive expanded collateral backing from basis on equity perpetuals (perps) - marking the second wave of diversification. According to the project, equity perps, also known as RWA (real-world asset) tokenization perps, have grown 10x to $6B in Open Interest since March. The RWA perps market could grow 100x bigger, offering scalable basis yield opportunity that's not tied to the cyclical crypto market. The underlying asset base is >$150 trillion compared to ~$2.5 trillion of crypto, making this the most scalable extension of the basis allocation to date. Currently, most of the collateral backing (32%) is in liquid stablecoins (e.g USDT, USDC), while DeFi lending is the second largest reserve category with a 31% share across Aave and Morpho. Ethena founder Guy Young explained that they took a cautious approach to wait until seeing deep, liquid markets with data history before moving into the opportunity at scale.
