Ethena moves to end VC unlocks, plans revenue-funded ENA buybacks

The Ethena Foundation is making changes to ENA’s ownership structure, investor unlocks and potential value accrual to the token.

The Foundation said Thursday it had completed a buyout of all locked tokens from certain major seed investors that sold ENA during the last nine months.

The team also reached a new Master Framework Agreement with Ethena Labs under which all protocol IP and ownership of value accrued by the protocol will belong exclusively to the Foundation and be governed by ENA holders, with no residual cash flow going to equity investors in Labs.

Ethena has put a fee-switch proposal to a governance vote that would direct net revenue across all Ethena-branded business lines into programmatic ENA buybacks; the Risk Committee has already approved the proposal.

In addition, the Foundation and lead investors have agreed to eliminate future monthly VC unlocks by releasing unvested tokens, while team allocations remain subject to their original vesting schedules.