Ethena has moved to eliminate a major source of potential ENA selling pressure, buying remaining locked tokens from large seed investors that sold the cryptocurrency during the past nine months as part of a broader restructuring of the protocol’s token economics. The Ethena Foundation announced four changes on August 27 covering early-investor holdings, token and equity alignment, future ENA buybacks and the remaining venture-capital unlock schedule. The Foundation spent the past two weeks conducting over-the-counter purchases from major seed investors originally allocated more than 0.25% of ENA’s total supply.
Investors were assessed based on whether they had sold ENA following the market peak on October 10, 2025. The Foundation purchased the remaining unvested allocations of participating investors that had sold during that period. One wallet declined the offer. Early investors that had not sold were separately offered the opportunity to sell their remaining locked tokens at their original purchase price without a discount. None accepted. Ethena did not disclose the total number of tokens acquired, the amount spent or the purchase prices.
Monthly VC Unlocks Are Being Eliminated
The buyout forms part of a wider effort to remove the recurring supply overhang created by early-investor vesting. Ethena Foundation and its lead investors have agreed to accelerate the release of all remaining original investor allocations beginning October 5, rather than continuing the existing monthly unlock schedule. That changes the timing of circulating supply rather than destroying the tokens, but it removes recurring monthly venture-capital unlock events that traders have monitored as potential sources of selling pressure. Team allocations are not receiving the same treatment and will remain locked according to their original vesting schedules. Following the restructuring, approximately 12% of ENA supply is expected to remain locked and unvested, consisting exclusively of team, ecosystem and Foundation allocations.
The supply changes are significant because ENA has repeatedly faced sizable scheduled releases. Approximately 171.9 million tokens were unlocked in early August alone. ENA rallied sharply alongside the announcement, climbing roughly 23% over 24 hours to around $0.17. The token has approximately doubled in slightly more than a week, although the move has also coincided with a broader recovery across cryptocurrency markets.
Protocol Revenue Could Now Fund ENA Buybacks
Ethena is simultaneously attempting to strengthen the economic connection between its businesses and ENA holders. The Foundation and Ethena Labs have reached agreement on a Master Framework Agreement assigning the protocol’s intellectual property and ownership of value generated by the ecosystem exclusively to the Foundation. That value would consequently fall under ENA-holder governance, while equity investors in Ethena Labs would have no residual claim on protocol cash flows. The restructuring addresses a longstanding concern surrounding crypto projects that operate both a token-governed protocol and a conventional equity-backed development company: whether economic value ultimately accrues to token holders or private shareholders.
Ethena has also opened a governance vote on activating an ENA fee switch. Under the proposal, once USDe circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion, 95% of net revenue received by the Foundation from Ethena-branded businesses would be allocated to programmatic ENA purchases, with the remaining 5% retained for ecosystem development. The proposal has already received approval from Ethena’s Risk Committee but still requires governance approval before implementation.
USDe currently has approximately $4.6 billion in circulation, meaning supply would need to increase by roughly $2.9 billion before the initial buyback threshold is reached. The combination of investor buyouts, accelerated unlocks and revenue-funded purchases represents a substantial redesign of ENA’s supply and value-accrual structure. The immediate effect is to remove remaining locked allocations from most large early investors that had demonstrated a willingness to sell. The longer-term impact depends on whether USDe returns to growth and the proposed fee switch activates. If it does, Ethena would move from periodically releasing early-investor supply into the market toward using operating revenue to create recurring demand for ENA — materially changing the token’s economic relationship with the protocol it governs.