Ethena Foundation Buys Out Early Investors to Address Monthly Unlock Overhang
Ethena (ENA)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
bitcoinethereumnews.com reports that the Ethena Foundation has announced major updates, including investor buyouts, to address the early investor monthly overhang. The Foundation revealed it acquired all locked tokens in OTC transactions over the last two weeks from major seed investors who received more than 0.25% of the total token supply. These investors had sold any ENA within the last nine months.
The move aims to eliminate future overhang by releasing unvested tokens, though all team tokens remain locked according to original vesting schedules. Additionally, the Foundation reached an agreement with Ethena Labs on a Master Framework Agreement, assigning IP and ownership of accrued value to the Foundation exclusively. Under this agreement, there is no residual cash flow due to equity investors in the Labs entity.
The governance proposal for revenue buybacks is now live, implementing a fee switch where net revenue will be used to programmatically buy back ENA. ENA rallied following these updates, recording one of the largest gains in the crypto market today. The token is currently trading at around $0.16, up over 14% today and over 80% in the past week.
This rally occurred even as Bitcoin rallied above $80,000. The CME added Ethena to its single-asset cryptocurrency benchmarks earlier this week, serving as another bullish catalyst. Despite these gains, ENA remains down over 15% year-to-date.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ENA, measured when this story was written up on 27 August 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Whalio's Binance spot data for ENA shows a price of $0.1475 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 59.2% and a 4-hour buy ratio of 50.8%. These short-term readings are higher than the 24-hour buy ratio of 48.9%, indicating that buying pressure is building in the immediate term. The 1-hour volume delta is positive at +$979,768, while the 4-hour delta is +$652,181, contrasting with a negative 24-hour delta of -$668,659. A positive volume delta means buyers are aggressively hitting ask prices, while a negative delta suggests sellers are dominating over the longer timeframe. The 24-hour spot volume is $31,929,234 with 164,211 trades, and the Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) for the 24-hour close is +$6,723,513. Net buying occurred for 17 of the last 24 hours, suggesting sustained accumulation despite the negative aggregate delta.
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, the 7-day average buy ratio was 50.3%, with the latest day showing a 1.4-point decrease relative to that average. Spot volume over the week was 0.42x the average, indicating significantly lower trading activity than usual. The coin experienced 4 days of net buying out of 7, with a total price change of +58.1% over 8 days. The 8-day volume delta totaled +$4,217,608. This represents an unusual day for the coin, as the current 24-hour buy ratio of 48.9% is lower than the weekly average of 50.3%, and the volume is well below the typical level seen over the preceding week.