$ENA traded up 22% over seven days and 54% over 30 days, and down 3.3% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Its market value is about $2.5 billion, ranking 43rd.
The 23% Problem
Kendrick’s argument runs through a ratio. If $USDe reaches $40 billion and $ENA‘s price stays where it is, annual buybacks would equal roughly 23% of the token’s circulating market value. The bank calls that far too high to be sustained, and concludes the price rises until the buyback share settles at a defensible level.
The comparison is Uniswap, where the fee switch activated in December 2025. Annualized buybacks there have stabilized at 3% to 4% of market value, a level reached partly because $UNI roughly tripled over the same period.
Standard Chartered set a $100 price target on $UNI when it initiated coverage in June.
The bank said this month that the $UNI target may now be too low. Applying Uniswap’s equilibrium to Ethena is what produces the 7x.
Buyback Arms at $7.5 Billion
The fee switch passed a Snapshot vote that ran from Aug. 27 to Sept. 2, drawing 17.8 million $ENA in favor, none against, across 88 votes against a 5 million quorum. The Ethena Foundation confirmed the result on the governance forum on Sept. 8.
The approved schedule ties the revenue take rate to $USDe circulating supply: 5% at $7.5 billion, 10% at $10 billion, 15% at $15 billion and 20% at $20 billion. Nothing is bought below the first threshold. $USDe‘s supply is $4.90 billion, according to DefiLlama, which leaves the program about 53% of growth away from its first purchase.
Standard Chartered’s illustrative table extends the schedule to a 25% take rate at $25 billion of $USDe supply and sources it to Ethena. The proposal on the governance forum publishes tiers through $20 billion.
The proposal names the three revenue lines covered by the switch as $USDe savings, Ethena Whitelabel stablecoins and “Ethena [X],” which the Foundation said was launching the following week. Ethena Pay, a savings and payments app built on $USDe, launched on Avalanche on Sept. 1.
Ethena has generated $20.1 million in fees over the past 30 days and $1.05 billion since inception, according to DefiLlama.
Basis Trade Gives Way
The original engine behind $USDe‘s yield was the crypto basis trade, long spot against short perpetual futures, which paid above 20% at points in 2024. Those rates have compressed, and $USDe supply fell with them from a 2025 peak of about $15 billion. $USDe is now the fourth-largest stablecoin, behind Tether’s USDT, Circle’s USDC and Sky’s USDS, in a market DefiLlama sizes at $306 billion.
Ethena has been replacing that yield with five other sources, which Standard Chartered puts at a blended 5.2% today against an average of 7% since inception.
Over-collateralized DeFi lending, mostly through Aave and Morpho, pays about 4.9%. Institutional lending, roughly half of it arranged through Maple, pays 5% to 7%. Liquid stablecoin holdings, led by PayPal’s PYUSD, pay 4.0%. Credit products beyond Treasury bills, proxied by Centrifuge’s JAAA, pay 5.0%.
The fifth is the newest. Ethena is applying the same delta-neutral method to equity and commodity perpetuals, a segment the bank says grew from zero to $15 million in 10 months.
The framework for tokenized equity basis trades filed on the governance forum in August approves 17 names on Binance and three on OKX, with position caps at 10% of perpetual open interest and 20% of a token’s circulating supply.
Standard Chartered’s main stated risk is that yield-bearing stablecoins grow more slowly than expected. Its second is that real-world assets on chain fail to grow from roughly $40 billion today to the $2 trillion the bank forecasts by end-2028, which would leave Ethena short of collateral to generate yield on.
Unlocks End Oct. 5
The buyback is the second half of a tokenomics overhaul Ethena announced on Aug. 27. The Foundation bought locked $ENA in over-the-counter transactions from seed investors allocated more than 0.25% of supply who had sold any tokens since the market peak of Oct. 10, 2025. Investors in that group who had not sold were offered par and none accepted.
Remaining investor unlocks are accelerated to a single release on Oct. 5, ending the monthly schedule. About 12% of supply stays locked afterwards, held by the team, the ecosystem and the Foundation. StablecoinX, the Nasdaq-listed $ENA treasury vehicle, holds about 20% of total supply under the lockup terms in its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.
The same announcement covered a Master Framework Agreement between the Ethena Foundation and Ethena Labs assigning protocol intellectual property and residual economics to the Foundation rather than to Labs equity holders. Ethena described it as an agreement in principle and said it expects to publish the document in October. Standard Chartered cites the arrangement in its value-accrual case.
