Crypto projects have started returning value to their tokenholders, buying back tokens with real revenue the way public companies buy back stock, and voting to cut new supply. Ethena proposed a buyback program last week and ENA rose as much as 27% over the two days that followed. Solana’s validators voted to cut the supply of new SOL. And Hyperliquid already spends nearly all of its trading fees buying back its own token, every day, automatically.
Buybacks themselves aren’t new. Binance was burning BNB with a fifth of its quarterly profits years ago. What changed is that paying tokenholders stopped looking legally radioactive in the U.S., and value-return programs became standard in about a month.
These programs are not alike. Some are rules: written into code or a fixed schedule, automatic, easy to verify. Some are pens: decisions a foundation makes privately, on terms it sets. And the one that moved the market most last week hasn’t bought anything: Ethena’s buyback does not switch on until USDe, its synthetic dollar, grows 78% from here.
What Ethena Actually Proposed
Ethena’s proposal would activate a “fee switch,” routing a share of the protocol’s revenue into ENA purchases. Ethena runs USDe, a $4.22 billion synthetic dollar that earns yield from the basis trade: hold an asset, short its perpetual future, collect the funding longs pay.The terms are a staircase. The take rate (the share of protocol revenue directed to buybacks) starts at 5% when USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion and scales to 25% at $25 billion, per the milestone table in the governance post. At the first milestone, that’s roughly $22.5 million a year of buying, by the post’s own illustrative math; at $20 billion of supply, $240 million.
The number that traveled last week was 95%: the share of the Foundation’s revenue take that buys ENA once the first milestone hits. The number that matters is the take itself, and the governance post sets it two ways that never reconcile: the milestone table directs a share of protocol revenue, starting at 5%; the text below it commits 95% of the net revenue Ethena’s three business lines pay the Foundation. An equity buyback comes wrapped in board authorization, securities filings, and liability. This one is a governance post and a vote.
That vote closed on Snapshot at 13:59 UTC on Sept. 2 and passed unanimously: 17.79 million ENA in favor, none against, none abstaining, across 88 votes — more than three times the 5 million ENA quorum. ENA trades near $0.151, below the proposal day’s peak but up roughly 63% in 30 days.
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