Ethena has introduced a new yield source for USDe while shutting off the token incentives that had supported its growth, just as ENA heads toward a major unlock date.
On Sept. 25, Ethena said it would add Binance bStocks tokenized equities as spot collateral and hedge the exposure through Binance stock perpetual contracts. A day later, the project announced that all token incentives and inflation tied to USDe growth will end at the close of this month.
Over the same stretch, ENA climbed from $0.014 on Sept. 16 to around $0.2, then moved higher to roughly $0.28 after a brief pause near that level. The token posted a gain of nearly 100% in 10 days.
USDe expands its hedged yield model into tokenized stocks
Ethena said its risk committee had already approved tokenized equity basis trading as part of USDe’s allocation strategy. Before this change, the protocol mainly built USDe’s delta-neutral yield by holding crypto spot assets and hedging them with derivatives.
Data on Ethena’s website shows USDe supply currently stands at about $5.5 billion. The project said open interest in Binance stock perpetuals is above $2.9 billion, with a 105% monthly compound growth rate so far this year. It also cited an average annualized stock basis yield of 3.56% over the past six months.
Founder Guy Young described the move as the most important expansion of USDe’s sourcing mechanism since launch. Ethena said that as more traditional financial assets move on-chain, the opportunity in stock perpetuals could eventually exceed the market for crypto perpetuals.
USDe is not a stablecoin backed by cash and Treasuries. Its structure packages a delta-neutral strategy into a dollar-denominated product: hold the spot asset, short an equal amount of perpetuals, and collect the funding paid by leveraged longs. Price moves are offset across the two legs, while the return comes from the funding itself.
According to the article, that engine ran strongly through 2024 and 2025. Bitcoin funding rates, weighted by open interest, were about 11% annualized across 2024. USDe supply then climbed to roughly $14.8 billion around October 2025. By August 2026, the contribution from crypto basis had fallen to about 1%, and supply had dropped below $5 billion.
That backdrop helps explain why Ethena is now applying the same structure to tokenized equities.
USDe-linked growth incentives are being shut off
At the same time, Ethena is ending the subsidy layer tied to USDe expansion.
The protocol said this month that token incentives linked to USDe growth have already fallen about 85% since the first airdrop in 2024. By the end of this month, all USDe-related token incentives and inflation will stop completely.
Data cited from Crypto Briefing shows the protocol has distributed more than $750 million in rewards since launch, helping USDe reach about $15 billion in October 2025. Supply later contracted by more than 65%. The article says the decline in incentives broadly tracked the cooling in crypto funding rates, so the month-end cutoff is less a sudden removal than the final closure of a subsidy valve that had already been tightened substantially.
In the article’s framing, the yield expansion addresses the question of scale, while the incentive cutoff addresses dilution. Future USDe growth would no longer rely on additional ENA issuance to subsidize holding costs. Because incentives had already been reduced by about 85%, the marginal effect on sell pressure may be limited, but the token model shifts away from subsidy-led growth toward a more verifiable supply structure.
Oct. 5 is the next key date for ENA supply
In August, Ethena Foundation said all remaining original investor unlocks would be accelerated and completed on Oct. 5, 2026. After that date, no investor tokens would remain locked. Team tokens, however, will continue under the original lockup and vesting schedule. The foundation said the goal was to remove the persistent supply overhang created by monthly VC unlocks.
Under the previous plan, investor tokens vested linearly each month. After the cliff ended in April 2025, investors were set to receive about 78.125 million ENA on the fifth day of each month through March 2028. Core contributors were scheduled to receive about 93.75 million ENA on the same day, while the foundation tranche was set at about 40.625 million ENA on the second day of each month.
After the August revision, the investor line was removed. The investor tranches originally scheduled for roughly 17 remaining months, from November 2026 through March 2028, were folded into a single release on Oct. 5. That brings the investor unlock schedule to an end about 17 months earlier than first planned.
The monthly vesting schedules for the team and the foundation were not accelerated. On Oct. 5, the regular team tranche will still be released as originally planned.
Foundation also pursued OTC buyouts and buyback offers
Running alongside the accelerated unlock was a buyout process aimed at seed investors that had already sold part of their holdings. The foundation said it bought locked tokens over the counter from some major seed investors whose original allocations exceeded 0.25% of total supply and who had sold ENA after the market peak on Oct. 10, 2025.
For investors who had not sold after that peak, the foundation made buyback offers at par, but none accepted. One wallet in the seller group also declined to be bought out.
The foundation did not disclose the counterparties, token amounts, or pricing involved in those transactions.
StablecoinX restrictions are lifted, but sales still need approval
Another point of focus is StablecoinX, one of the largest ENA holding addresses. The article says it holds about 3.03 billion ENA, or roughly 20% of total supply, and had originally been subject to a 48-month lockup under a PIPE transaction.
On Sept. 14, StablecoinX signed a waiver with Ethena OpCo and Ethena Foundation. A later Form 8-K disclosure said that from Oct. 5, lockup, vesting, and staged release restrictions on ENA held or to be delivered to StablecoinX would be permanently removed, aligning the date with the release day announced for other holders.
That does not mean the tokens can be sold freely. The filing states that the tokens will still be held as inventory, and any sale, transfer, or other disposition requires prior written approval from the foundation. If a sale is needed for working capital or strategic reasons, StablecoinX must provide at least five business days’ written notice, and the foundation has a right of first refusal at the proposed price.
Attention shifts to how the market handles the unlock
Some community members argue that ENA liquidity in the secondary market is being tightly controlled. In that view, the lockup may have been removed on paper, while actual pricing power after October remains concentrated through coordinated restrictions.
With only about a week left before the large unlock, Oct. 5 now stands as the date the market will use to show how much of ENA’s recent rally can hold once supply changes move from announcement to execution.