Ethena (ENA) Tokenomics

The Ethena protocol features a dual-token system centered around USDe, a synthetic dollar, and ENA, the governance token. The token economics of ENA are designed to incentivize long-term alignment and participation in the protocol's governance and ecosystem development. The total supply of ENA is 15,000,000,000 tokens.

Issuance Mechanism

The ENA token utilizes a dynamic issuance/burn mechanism. While the total supply is capped at 15 billion, the initial distribution includes a portion allocated to the Binance Launchpool and a significant amount reserved for ecosystem development and airdrops, which are distributed through incentive campaigns like the Shard and Sats campaigns.

The Ethena protocol also issues USDe, a synthetic dollar, which is backed by delta-hedged Ethereum and Bitcoin collateral. USDe maintains its peg stability by executing automated and programmatic delta-neutral hedges against the underlying backing assets, primarily through opening short perpetual contracts on centralized exchanges.

Allocation Mechanism

The total supply of 15 billion ENA tokens is distributed across five main categories:

The Ecosystem Development and Airdrops allocation (28%) is used for various initiatives, including the Shard and Sats incentive campaigns. The first and second seasons of the Rewards Campaigns are planned to distribute 10% of the total ENA supply to Ethena users.

Usage and Incentive Mechanism

The primary utility of the ENA token is governance. ENA token holders are planned to be able to vote on key proposals concerning the Ethena protocol's operations and risk management, including:

• General risk management frameworks.
• Composition of USDe backing collateral.
• Exposure to exchanges and custodians.
• Integrations with decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and cross-chain initiatives.
• Prioritization of new products and community grants.
• Sizing and composition of the Reserve Fund.
• Distribution allocation between sUSDe (staked USDe) holders and the Reserve Fund.

Incentive Campaigns

Ethena uses incentive campaigns, such as the Shard and Sats campaigns, to drive adoption and liquidity for USDe. Users earn rewards (Shards/Sats) by performing various actions, with higher-risk activities generally receiving higher rewards:

• Holding USDe
• Locking USDe
• Staking USDe (receiving sUSDe, which is a reward-accruing asset)
• Providing USDe liquidity on external protocols like Curve and Uniswap.

For example, during the Shard Campaign, activities like locking LP tokens and locking USDe received significantly higher shard boosts than simply staking and holding sUSDe.

Staked ENA (sENA)

Users can lock ENA to receive sENA, a liquid receipt token. sENA is designed to reward users aligned with the long-term growth of Ethena. Initially, sENA earns rewards from unclaimed ENA from the Season 2 airdrop distribution. Additionally, staked ENA can be used in generalized restaking pools, such as in partnership with Symbiotic, to provide economic security for cross-chain transfers of USDe.

Locking Mechanism and Vesting Schedule

The ENA token features a strict vesting schedule for the Core Contributors and Investors allocations, designed to ensure long-term commitment to the project:

• Core Contributors (Team): The 30% allocation is subject to a 1-year cliff, meaning no tokens are unlocked before the first anniversary of the token launch. Following the cliff, tokens vest linearly on a monthly basis over a 3-year period.
• Investors: The 25% allocation follows the same schedule: a 1-year cliff followed by 3 years of linear monthly vesting.

USDe Unlocking

For users who stake or lock USDe, the unstaking/unlocking process requires a seven-day cooldown period before the underlying USDe can be withdrawn. The DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE for the Ethena Staking contract has the ability to set this cooldown duration up to a maximum of 90 days.

Upcoming Unlocking Schedule

The following table details the next ten scheduled token unlock events for ENA, which represent the start of the linear monthly vesting for the locked allocations (Team and Investors) after the initial cliff period.

These monthly unlocks, starting in November 2025, each represent an injection of approximately 333 million ENA into the circulating supply, equivalent to 4.65% of the current circulating supply at the time of the unlock calculation.