I was looking into ENA recently and came across an interesting timeline.
After ENA peaked last October, its price plunged to an all-time low near $0.09. During the decline, early seed investors kept receiving monthly token unlocks and selling as they unlocked—so the supply pressure never let up.
On August 27, the Ethena Foundation dealt with all of these issues at once. It pushed through four things:
First, it bought out all the locked tokens held by seed investors who had been selling as soon as their tokens unlocked, and sent them on their way. Investors who hadn’t sold were given the opportunity to sell at their original purchase price, but nobody took it—which suggests they’re still bullish.
Second, all remaining investor tokens fully unlocked at once on October 5, bringing the monthly unlock schedule to an end. The ticking time bomb that had been weighing on the price for a year was defused.
Third, the fee switch proposal passed a vote on September 8: 95% of the Foundation’s net revenue will be used to buy back ENA on the open market once USDe’s circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. It’s currently around $5 billion, so there’s still a $2.5 billion gap—but the direction is clear.
Fourth, the framework for ownership of the protocol’s intellectual property and economic interests (the Master Framework Agreement) is expected to be released this month, firmly directing the value of the protocol to token holders rather than Ethena Labs’ equity holders.
Standard Chartered has picked up on this thesis and set a $2 target price for ENA—about 7x from the reference price of $0.28—with a year-end 2028 time horizon, drawing a comparison to UNI’s price performance after its fee switch.
ENA trending now probably isn’t random—it’s the market repricing the token after all these events came together.
The fee switch won’t actually activate until USDe rebounds to $7.5 billion. That progress is worth watching.
Do you think USDe can surpass $7.5 billion by the end of this year?
$ENA #ENA
After ENA peaked last October, its price plunged to an all-time low near $0.09. During the decline, early seed investors kept receiving monthly token unlocks and selling as they unlocked—so the supply pressure never let up.
On August 27, the Ethena Foundation dealt with all of these issues at once. It pushed through four things:
First, it bought out all the locked tokens held by seed investors who had been selling as soon as their tokens unlocked, and sent them on their way. Investors who hadn’t sold were given the opportunity to sell at their original purchase price, but nobody took it—which suggests they’re still bullish.
Second, all remaining investor tokens fully unlocked at once on October 5, bringing the monthly unlock schedule to an end. The ticking time bomb that had been weighing on the price for a year was defused.
Third, the fee switch proposal passed a vote on September 8: 95% of the Foundation’s net revenue will be used to buy back ENA on the open market once USDe’s circulating supply reaches $7.5 billion. It’s currently around $5 billion, so there’s still a $2.5 billion gap—but the direction is clear.
Fourth, the framework for ownership of the protocol’s intellectual property and economic interests (the Master Framework Agreement) is expected to be released this month, firmly directing the value of the protocol to token holders rather than Ethena Labs’ equity holders.
Standard Chartered has picked up on this thesis and set a $2 target price for ENA—about 7x from the reference price of $0.28—with a year-end 2028 time horizon, drawing a comparison to UNI’s price performance after its fee switch.
ENA trending now probably isn’t random—it’s the market repricing the token after all these events came together.
The fee switch won’t actually activate until USDe rebounds to $7.5 billion. That progress is worth watching.
Do you think USDe can surpass $7.5 billion by the end of this year?
$ENA #ENA