Coinbase Ventures has bought ENA tokens on the open market rather than through a discounted private round. Ethena announced Tuesday on X that the purchase accompanies a new partnership with Coinbase focused on on-chain finance and savings products for the exchange’s user base. The first product is set to launch next week, though details remain undisclosed.
First public-market ENA buy by Coinbase Ventures
Coinbase Ventures confirmed the purchase in a separate X post, saying it backed Ethena via an open-market buy of ENA. The venture arm called Ethena a key player in on-chain finance and expects closer ties among Ethena, Coinbase and USDC. This deal deviates from Coinbase Ventures’ usual approach: the firm has made over 600 investments since 2018, most involving seed or early-stage private rounds. This time, it bought ENA at market price, with no discounted allocation. Ethena did not disclose the token count, average price or wallet addresses tied to the trade.
Partnership targets Coinbase’s 100M+ users
According to Ethena’s announcement, the partnership will expand on-chain finance and savings products to Coinbase’s over 100 million users — a figure first crossed in 2022. The deal could boost attention for Ethena’s core products: USDe (a synthetic dollar) and sUSDe (its staked yield-bearing version). Coinbase reported $294 billion in platform assets at the end of Q1. Ethena did not specify whether the upcoming launch involves USDe, sUSDe, ENA or a separate Coinbase product.
Ethena’s TVL and revenue snapshot
DefiLlama data shows Ethena holds about $5.4 billion in total value locked, with the USDe contract accounting for roughly $4.5 billion. The protocol generates $178 million in annualized fees. Since founder Guy Young launched Ethena Labs in 2023, cumulative fees have reached $972 million and cumulative protocol revenue stands at $332 million. The governance token ENA has a market cap of approximately $859 million and a fully diluted valuation of about $1.4 billion.
ENA jumps 8.3% post-announcement
Market data shows ENA rose 8.3% in 24 hours after the announcement, with $168 million in 24-hour trading volume. On-chain volume via Uniswap V3 and Aerodrome reached $178 million, exceeding centralized exchange flows during the same period. Neither Ethena nor Coinbase has shared further details about the product expected next week. Coinbase already serves as the primary custodian for ENA held by the Ethena Labs core team and Foundation under a prior Coinbase Prime agreement.