Ethena Buys Out Seed Investors' Locked ENA Tokens
Ethena (ENA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that the Ethena Foundation announced on August 27 that it has purchased all locked ENA tokens from major seed investors who sold the asset in the previous nine months. This buyout is part of a four-part overhaul of the protocol’s ownership and token economics, which also transfers intellectual property and accrued value exclusively to the Foundation. Under the new structure, equity investors in the Ethena Labs entity receive no residual cash flow, while token holders will govern the IP.
A governance proposal is now live to switch on a fee mechanism that directs net revenue from every Ethena business line into programmatic buybacks of ENA. The Foundation and lead investors agreed to release unvested tokens to remove the future overhang from monthly venture-capital unlocks, though team tokens remain locked under their original schedules. These combined changes aim to cut selling pressure and return value to the token rather than to early backers.
The announcement follows recent developments, including a $1 billion secured facility with FalconX to back USDe and the addition of ENA reference rates on CME Group’s derivatives platform. While the buyout and fee switch require governance approval, the exact parameters, including the share of revenue allocated to buybacks, were not detailed. The Foundation has not disclosed how much ENA it purchased or the pace of any buyback program, leaving near-term market impact uncertain.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ENA, measured when this story was written up on 28 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Whalio data shows ENA trading at $0.1701 with a 24-hour buy ratio of 52.3%, indicating a slight majority of volume coming from buyers. The 1-hour buy ratio stands at 48.2%, suggesting immediate selling pressure has returned after a 4-hour period where buyers dominated with a 57.3% ratio. Volume delta reflects this shift, turning negative at -$460,804 in the last hour compared to a positive +$1,936,935 over the past four hours. Over the full day, net buying remains strong with a +$6,367,162 volume delta and a cumulative CVD of +$5,957,927. This indicates that while short-term momentum has cooled, the daily flow is still heavily skewed toward accumulation. Buyers controlled the flow for 16 of the last 24 hours, supporting a total spot volume of $137,269,138 across 609,691 trades.
The latest daily buy ratio of 48.8% sits at the 47th percentile of the last 281 days, against a median of 49.0% - ordinary for this coin.
Twenty-four hours later
What ENA did over the 24 hours after the story broke. The market moves for its own reasons; this is what happened, not what the story caused.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ENA, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, ENA experienced a 45.9% price increase over eight days, driven by a total volume delta of +$10,039,317. Today’s 24-hour spot volume of $137,269,138 is 1.74 times the weekly average, marking this as an unusually active trading day. The current 24-hour buy ratio of 52.3% is 2.5 percentage points higher than the 7-day average of 49.8%, showing sustained buyer interest. While the weekly data shows only three days of net buying out of seven, the recent surge in volume and price suggests a strong upward trend. This activity contrasts with the typical distribution of buying days, highlighting a concentrated period of accumulation leading into the announcement.