Ethena governance approves fee switch, ENA buybacks to begin
Regulation & Gov ·
A unanimous snapshot vote clears the way for Ethena Foundation to start funding ENA purchases directly from protocol revenue.
The Ethena Foundation confirmed that its fee switch proposal cleared governance with all votes cast in favor, a result posted alongside the snapshot record and announced through the Foundation's own account. With the milestones tied to that proposal now active, the Foundation said programmatic buybacks of ENA will start immediately and increase in scale as further metrics and thresholds are met.
Mechanically, the fee switch routes net revenue generated across every business line operating under the Ethena brand into scheduled purchases of the ENA token, rather than leaving that revenue idle or distributed elsewhere. Before reaching a full vote, the buyback framework had already cleared review from the Risk Committee, giving the proposal an added layer of internal sign-off ahead of the token-holder decision.
The vote follows a set of structural changes the Foundation disclosed earlier. It bought out all locked tokens held by certain major seed investors who had sold any ENA in the preceding nine months, removing a source of potential future selling pressure. Separately, the Foundation and Ethena Labs signed a Master Framework Agreement assigning intellectual property and protocol-value accrual exclusively to the Foundation, placing that value under token-holder governance with no residual cash-flow claim left for Labs equity investors.
A fourth change addressed longer-term token overhang: the Foundation and lead investors agreed to release unvested tokens early, eliminating the monthly unlock schedule that had applied to VC allocations. Team tokens were not affected and continue to vest under their original terms.
What remains unclear is the specific pace and size of the buybacks as they scale, since the Foundation has tied increases to metrics and milestones without publishing the thresholds themselves. How quickly protocol revenue translates into measurable ENA purchases, and whether the removal of VC unlock overhang meaningfully changes token supply dynamics, are the points likely to draw the closest tracking next.