Ethena disclosed two back-to-back updates on Sept. 25: USDe’s basis strategy is being extended to Binance tokenized stocks and stock perpetuals, and all token incentives and inflation linked to USDe growth will stop at the end of this month.
Those announcements arrived during a sharp move in ENA. According to the article, the token climbed from $0.014 on Sept. 16 to around $0.2, then pushed further to about $0.28 after a brief pause near that level, posting a gain of nearly 100% over 10 days.
USDe strategy expands into tokenized equities
On Sept. 25, Ethena said it would use Binance bStocks tokenized equities as spot collateral assets and hedge the related exposure through Binance stock perpetual contracts. The article says Ethena’s risk committee had already approved the inclusion of tokenized equity basis trades in USDe’s allocation strategy.
Until now, Ethena has mainly built USDe’s delta-neutral yield strategy by holding spot crypto assets and hedging them with derivatives. The piece describes USDe as something different from a cash-and-Treasuries stablecoin. Instead, it packages a delta-neutral structure into a dollar-denominated product: hold the spot asset, short an equivalent amount of perpetual futures, cancel out directional price exposure, and earn yield from the funding rate itself.
Data from the protocol website puts current USDe supply at about $5.5 billion. Ethena said open interest in Binance stock perpetual contracts is above $2.9 billion, with a 105% monthly compound growth rate so far this year, while the average annualized stock basis yield over the past six months was 3.56%.
Founder Guy Young called it the most important expansion of USDe’s source-of-funds mechanism since launch. Ethena also said that as more traditional financial assets move on-chain, the opportunity in stock perpetuals could eventually exceed that of crypto perpetuals.
USDe growth subsidies are being shut off
The strategy change is paired with the formal end of growth subsidies tied to USDe.
Ethena said this month that token incentives linked to USDe growth have already fallen by about 85% since the project’s first airdrop in 2024. By the end of this month, all USDe-related token incentives and inflation will be halted, with no further distribution after that.
Citing Crypto Briefing data, the article says the protocol has distributed more than $750 million in rewards since launch. That helped USDe reach roughly $15 billion in October 2025 before supply later contracted by more than 65%. The piece adds that the decline in incentives broadly tracked the cooling in crypto funding rates, so taking the figure to zero at month-end amounts to fully closing a valve that had already been tightened most of the way.
The article also looks back at how the underlying economics changed. Bitcoin funding rates, weighted by open interest, annualized at around 11% for all of 2024. USDe supply then climbed to a peak of about $14.8 billion around October 2025. By August 2026, the contribution from crypto basis yield had been compressed to about 1%, and supply had fallen below $5 billion.
In that framing, the spread available in crypto derivatives is no longer enough on its own to sustain Ethena’s earlier growth logic, which is why the team is moving the same structure into tokenized equities. Once the subsidy program is fully removed, future USDe expansion will no longer rely on issuing additional ENA to offset holding costs. Because incentives had already been cut by about 85%, the incremental impact on fresh sell pressure may be limited, but the token model would shift away from subsidy-driven growth and toward a more verifiable supply structure.
Oct. 5 unlock is the next major supply event
The other major thread in the report is the large unlock scheduled for Oct. 5.
In August, the Ethena Foundation said all remaining original investor unlocks would be accelerated and completed on Oct. 5, 2026. After that date, no investor tokens will remain locked, while team tokens will continue under the original lockup and vesting schedule. The foundation said the goal was to remove the overhang created by recurring monthly VC unlocks.
Under the previous schedule, after the cliff period ended in April 2025, investor allocations were vesting linearly at about 78.125 million ENA every month on the fifth day of the month, with that schedule originally set to run through March 2028. Core contributors were set to receive about 93.75 million ENA on the same day each month, while the foundation tranche released about 40.625 million ENA every month on the second day.
After the August revision, the investor vesting line was removed. The investor tranches that had been scheduled across about 17 remaining months from November 2026 to March 2028 were rolled into a single release on Oct. 5, bringing the end of investor unlocks forward by about 17 months. Team and foundation monthly vesting were not included in that acceleration, and the team’s regular tranche will still be released as scheduled on Oct. 5.
Running alongside the accelerated unlock is a buyout program targeting seed investors that had already sold part of their holdings. The foundation said it had purchased, through over-the-counter transactions, locked tokens from certain 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. It also made par-value repurchase offers to investors who did not sell after that peak, but none accepted. One wallet in the seller group also declined the buyout. The foundation did not disclose the counterparties, token amounts, or pricing.
StablecoinX receives a waiver, but sales remain restricted
The article also highlights StablecoinX, one of the largest ENA-holding addresses. It holds about 3.03 billion ENA, 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 letter with Ethena OpCo and the Ethena Foundation. A later Form 8-K disclosure said the lockup, vesting, and staged release restrictions on ENA it holds or is due to receive will be permanently removed starting on Oct. 5, matching the release date announced to other holders by the foundation.
That does not mean unrestricted selling. The filing states that the tokens will continue to be held as inventory, and any sale, transfer, or other disposition requires prior written approval from the foundation. If sales are needed for working capital or strategic reasons, StablecoinX must provide at least five business days’ written notice, and the foundation retains a right of first purchase at the proposed price.
Market attention is shifting to the unlock date
Some people in the community, according to the article, argue that ENA liquidity in the secondary market is being tightly concentrated and managed. In that view, the project has formally removed lockups while effectively assembling a price alliance that could shape market pricing power after October.
With roughly one week left before the unlock, Oct. 5 is now the key date the market is watching.
