ENA Fee Switch Passed 17.8M To 0, But Buybacks Start At $7.5B USDe

The ENA fee switch passed on Snapshot with 17.8 million votes in favor and none against. Ethena's own buyback table, though, does not start until USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion. USDe stands at $4.76 billion on DefiLlama, so that first milestone is still ahead.

The token itself trades at $0.2205 on CoinGecko, down 7.7% over seven days and about 85% below its $1.52 all-time high. Two things sit behind that price: an investor unlock that finished on October 5 and a buyback plan that has not started.

The August 27 Foundation post

Ethena's Foundation published an ecosystem update on the same day as the vote. It described four moves. The Foundation bought locked tokens from major seed investors who had sold ENA within nine months. It agreed with lead investors to release the remaining unvested investor tokens, and it reached an agreement in principle with Ethena Labs that assigns protocol value to the Foundation. The fourth move was the fee switch itself.

Part of the Ethena Foundation's August 27 update. Team tokens stay locked under their original schedules, per the post.

What the ENA fee switch vote set up

Snapshot's proposal page shows the vote ran for six days, from August 27 to September 2, 2026. The page lists 88 votes, every one in favor, and the 17.8 million total cleared the 5 million quorum more than three times over. Inside the proposal sits a table that ties the share of net revenue going to ENA buybacks to how big USDe gets.

The first row starts at $7.5 billion of USDe, where a 5% take rate would mean an illustrative $22.5 million of buybacks a year. Later rows raise the rate as USDe grows, and the post says the 6.0% protocol yield behind its numbers is only illustrative, so the table works as a design sketch and nothing more.

What the unlock page shows now

Tokenomist puts the acceleration on October 5, 2026, and its summary lists a 1.5 billion token cliff unlock worth $362.1 million that day, spread across contributor and investor allocations. Ethena's post says team tokens remain locked. That is a difference worth reading in both sources.

Looking ahead, the next scheduled cliff is 40.6 million ENA on November 2 from the Foundation's allocation. Tokenomist also says it has recorded no burn or buyback activity over the past 30 days, which fits the table, since USDe supply has not reached the first threshold. CoinGecko lists a market cap of $2.96 billion, and Tokenomist counts 71% of the 15 billion supply as released.

Reading the ENA fee switch together

The ENA fee switch is a vote already won, and its payoff depends on USDe growing from $4.76 billion to more than $7.5 billion. That is a gain of roughly 58%. DefiLlama shows USDe supply falling 2.9% over the last week, so the gap has not narrowed.

The ENA Fee Switch result on Snapshot, with the milestone table inside the proposal.