The Katana-Sushi deal brings Sushi’s deployment on Katana’s network and Vault Bridge, its spot-trading and yield infrastructure, in-house, alongside a plan to direct more revenue toward $KAT stakers. Announced on November 11, 2026, the deals follow Katana’s purchase of perpetuals exchange IDEX in March 2026. A tokenomics overhaul takes effect on November 17, with buybacks set to begin later this year.
Key takeaways
- Katana now owns its core spot, perpetuals and bridged-asset yield products.
- A portion of revenue from four sources will fund $KAT buybacks.
- avKAT stakers will receive all tokens purchased through the buybacks.
- The unstaking wait will drop from 45 days to seven.
Katana-Sushi deal brings core products in-house
Katana acquired Sushi’s Katana deployment and Vault Bridge technology, adding them to the IDEX business it bought in March. The company says the acquisitions bring its core trading and yield products under its ownership, keeping revenue from those activities within the ecosystem.
The IDEX deal also brought its leadership and engineering team to Katana. That team has built onchain trading products since 2017. IDEX pioneered a hybrid orderbook decentralized exchange and was Ethereum’s most-used application in 2018 and 2019 before adapting its technology for perpetual futures.
Katana CEO Matthew Fisher described the strategy as acquiring the company’s trading and yield infrastructure while changing how activity connects to token rewards. He said Katana had “brought the perps team in-house, and rewired $KAT to align usage and token value accrual.”
Katana was incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR and launched its mainnet in July 2025. Morpho provides lending and credit markets on the network.
Katana Swap launches as Perps adds trading features
Katana Swap launched on November 11 using the Sushi contracts acquired in the deal. The contracts are unchanged, but swap fees now remain within Katana’s ecosystem.
The Katana-Sushi agreement makes spot swapping a native product alongside Katana Perps, Katana’s live perpetual futures venue, built by the team behind IDEX.
The perpetuals platform has added isolated margin and builder codes. The codes let partner applications integrate Katana Perps and earn revenue from trades they route. Users also have access to recurring biweekly trading competitions funded by protocol revenue.
$KAT tokenomics connect fee revenue to staking rewards
A portion of revenue from Katana Swap, Katana Perps, Vault Bridge and sequencer fees will fund open-market $KAT buybacks. All tokens purchased through the program—100%—will go to avKAT stakers.
The tokenomics changes take effect on November 17, 2026. Buybacks are scheduled to begin later this year and will initially operate on a set schedule.
Katana says that, until now, it reinvested the large majority of revenue in ecosystem growth, including Yearn vaults, automated market maker pools and trading competitions. $KAT holders received only a portion.
The overhaul also does away with the previous voting-based participation model. Previously, holders would lock $KAT into vKAT, vote on emissions each round and pursue voting incentives. Katana says community feedback identified the system as too complex.
vKAT and emissions voting are being retired, making staking $KAT into avKAT the sole participation method. Seven days will take the place of the previous 45-day unstaking cooldown, and starting November 17, vKAT holders can switch to avKAT with one click.
Katana says removing the voting layer allows revenue from products across the chain to flow directly to stakers. Since fees fund the buybacks, their scale depends on usage.
Vault Bridge puts bridged capital to work
Vault Bridge is now fully and natively integrated with Katana, generating yield from the capital underlying bridged assets with user approval.
Instead of leaving that capital idle until users deploy it, the technology puts it to work. Revenue generated through Vault Bridge is reinvested in the Katana ecosystem.
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Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
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