Ethena (ENA) Price Prediction: USDe, Buybacks and the $2 Case

• Ethena (ENA) buybacks start only when USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion, about 51% above early-October supply of $4.98 billion.
• USDe peaked at $14.7 billion in October 2025, well above the first two fee switch rungs.
• With 89.4% of maximum supply circulating, the remaining overhang sits with contributor, Foundation and ecosystem allocations.
• ENA trades near 14 times annualized fees, against about 6 times for Sky and Aave.
• Our modeled end-2028 midpoint is about $0.83, under half of Standard Chartered’s $2 target.

Holders approved a fee switch in September that routes 95% of the Foundation’s net revenue into open-market ENA buybacks, and the first rung only activates when USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion. DefiLlama puts USDe at $4.98 billion on 7 October 2026. 

The gap looks smaller against USDe’s own history. Supply peaked at $14.7 billion on 9 October 2025 and lost 56% of it by late December, as redemptions followed the liquidation cascade of 10 October. The $7.5 billion trigger sits at roughly half that peak. A holder at $0.23 is betting that Ethena rebuilds a balance sheet it already ran once, this time with buybacks wired to the result.

ENA price, supply and unlocks in October 2026

ENA changed hands at $0.2308 on CoinGecko on 7 October, for a market cap of $3.09 billion and a fully diluted valuation of $3.46 billion. Circulating supply is 13.41 billion of a fixed 15 billion maximum. That leaves 89.4% of all ENA already liquid. The token sits 84.8% below its $1.52 all-time high from April 2024 and more than three times above the $0.07 low it printed this summer.

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The next scheduled release is 40.63 million ENA to the Foundation on 2 November, about 0.27% of maximum supply. Core contributor and Foundation tranches continue monthly into 2028. An ecosystem allocation with no published release schedule makes up the rest of the overhang.

How the Ethena fee switch works

The fee switch proposal ties a take rate on Ethena’s gross protocol revenue to USDe circulating supply. Once a rung activates, 95% of the net revenue paid to the Foundation from USDe savings, whitelabel stablecoins and Ethena [X] goes to programmatic ENA purchases.

The approved text specifies open-market buybacks with no burn. Repurchased ENA stays inside the 15 billion supply unless a later vote retires it. Blockworks Advisory backtested the design over 705 days for the governance forum. In stretches when the switch would have been on, it captured $52.7 million a year, equal to 3.36% of ENA’s market cap at the time. Averaged across the full sample, including the periods below the first rung, the figure fell to $8.82 million.

Today the amount retained for the token is close to zero. Ethena’s DefiLlama page shows $18.34 million in fees over the past 30 days and $17,873 in protocol revenue, since most of the yield flows to sUSDe holders and partners. Cumulative fees have passed $1.05 billion.

The investor buyout and the StablecoinX waiver

Dilution was the bear case through 2025, and the Foundation spent August taking it apart. It bought locked ENA over the counter from seed investors allocated more than 0.25% of supply who had sold since the October 2025 peak. Investors who had held were offered their original purchase price, and none accepted. Prices and token counts stayed undisclosed.

Every remaining investor token then unlocked in a single tranche of about 1.41 billion ENA on 5 October. That closed a vesting calendar originally set to drip monthly until March 2028.

StablecoinX holds the largest single block. The treasury company reported about 3.0 billion ENA at the end of June, close to 20% of maximum supply. A waiver filed with the SEC lifted its 48-month lock-up effective 5 October. The Foundation keeps approval rights over sales and a five-business-day right of first refusal on any disposal made to fund working capital.

ENA valuation against Sky, Aave and Curve

On 7 October figures, ENA carries the highest multiple in the group on both measures. The market pays about 14 times annualized fees for Ethena against roughly 6 times for Sky and Aave. Sky also keeps about half its fees as revenue, $13.48 million over the past 30 days. Curve’s 12.4x multiple comes with $1.58 million of monthly revenue on a far smaller base.

The premium prices in USDe growth and the fee switch together. If supply stalls below $7.5 billion, ENA holders own a governance token at more than twice Sky’s fee multiple with no revenue routed to them.

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Standard Chartered’s $2 target and modeled scenarios

Standard Chartered initiated coverage on 30 September with a $2 target for end-2028, built on USDe reaching $40 billion. At $40 billion of USDe and the price at publication, buybacks would absorb around 23% of circulating value each year, and the bank expects the price to rise until that ratio looks sustainable. Its path runs through $0.42 at end-2026 and $1.10 at end-2027.

Our scenarios below are modeled. They place the $2 call in the bull case, since a $2 token at 15 billion supply means a $30 billion market cap, roughly nine times today’s fully diluted value.

The base case needs USDe back above the first two rungs by 2028 with no loss event, a range it passed on the way to the 2025 peak. At full dilution, the base range implies an ENA market cap of $8.25 billion to $15 billion. The weighted midpoint for end-2028 sits under half of Standard Chartered’s figure.

Risks to the ENA price outlook

CryptoSlate’s account of the bank’s note puts returns on Ethena’s original strategy near 5.2%, down from above 20%, and the newer lending, RWA and commodity-linked sources still have to absorb tens of billions without compressing. The same note flags the tension between funding buybacks and paying yields high enough to keep deposits coming.

ENA also carries heavy derivatives positioning. Perpetual open interest stood near $945 million, about 31% of market cap, on CoinGecko’s 7 October snapshot, and a funding flip can move the token faster than any change in USDe.

Regulation has already cost Ethena one market. BaFin barred Ethena GmbH from offering USDe to the public in March 2025 and had the reserve assets frozen. The April 2025 wind-up order required Ethena GmbH to reverse its USDe issuance and declared secondary trading of USDe impermissible across the EU. Any return of USDe to the EU after the exit from Germany would need an issuer that clears MiCA authorization.