The Ethena Foundation opened a governance vote to direct all net revenue generated across Ethena-branded businesses into programmatic $ENA buybacks. If approved, the fee switch would use effectively 100% of that net revenue for $ENA purchases.

The proposal was live on Snapshot on Thursday, Aug. 27, after approval by Ethena’s Risk Committee, according to the Foundation. The Foundation’s announcement did not state the vote’s closing date.

The Foundation also said it had bought all remaining locked $ENA from certain major seed investors that sold the token during the previous nine months. The announcement did not identify the investors, quantify the tokens or purchase value, or disclose the buyout price, leaving the immediate reduction in future investor supply unquantified.

Protocol Value Moves to the Foundation

Ethena Labs and the Foundation also reached agreement on a Master Framework Agreement assigning protocol intellectual property and ownership of value accrued by the protocol exclusively to the Foundation, according to the announcement. The Foundation said those assets would be governed by $ENA holders and that Labs equity investors would retain no residual claim on protocol cash flow.

That arrangement changes the disclosed relationship between the token and the development company. Ethena’s token-transparency filing describes Labs as a Portuguese company that provides services to the Foundation and its operating subsidiary. It also says Labs holds no membership or ownership interest in the Foundation, cannot appoint or remove its directors, and does not direct Foundation decisions.

The filing says $ENA holders do not hold a contractual or programmatic right to protocol revenue distributions or treasury assets, although future revenue allocation falls within $ENA governance’s scope. It also disclosed that, as of a March 2026 update, USDe fees were routed 54.6% to sUSDe rewards, 27.9% to partner rewards and 17.5% to an Aave leverage program.

The Foundation separately said it and lead investors agreed to remove future monthly venture-investor unlocks by releasing unvested investor tokens, while team tokens remain subject to their original schedules. Ethena’s initial allocation assigned 25% of $ENA’s fixed 15 billion supply, or 3.75 billion tokens, to investors, with a one-year cliff followed by monthly vesting over three years.

As of the announcement, the Snapshot vote was live and had Risk Committee approval.