Ethena stops paying USDe stakers in ENA after supply falls more than two-thirds from its $15 billion peak

The reward bill is easier to judge per dollar of supply. More than $750 million paid out since launch ^[3] comes to roughly 5 cents for every dollar of USDe at the October 2025 peak of about $15 billion ^[4]. Against the under-$5 billion outstanding in late August ^[5], it is more than 15 cents a dollar ^[1]. Crypto Briefing describes the payout as a significant customer acquisition cost ^[10]. Most of those customers have gone, and more than $10 billion of supply has left ^[3].

Why they left is harder to pin down. USDe's yield comes from perpetual futures funding rates, which Ethena collects through a delta-neutral position. The 85% cut in ENA rewards since 2024 tracked a cooling in those same rates ^[6]. Crypto Briefing attributes the supply loss to incentives drying up ^[11], though by its own account the subsidy and the underlying yield fell at the same time.

The plausible paths from here split on funding. If rates run hot again, supply can rebuild with no subsidy, and once it passes $7.5 billion the September governance proposal sends 95% of net revenue into open-market ENA purchases ^[7]. If rates stay cool, supply drifts and the buyback never starts. The third path is that the institutional credit and white-label stablecoin products Ethena now prioritises ^[9] become the business, and USDe's own float matters less to the protocol than it did in 2025.

I think the remaining base depends less on ENA than the headline decline suggests. The incentive program had already been cut to roughly 15% of its 2024 size ^[4]. Taking that remainder to zero after this month ^[1] removes far less than the earlier cuts did. The counter-case is that the holders still here are the most rate-sensitive ones, and the last slice of rewards was what kept them. The view is wrong if supply falls well below $5 billion in the months after rewards stop while funding rates hold flat. That result would mean the subsidy was still propping up the base.

The buyback terms are the part of the package with a price on them. The threshold sits at half the peak ^[5] and more than 50% above current supply ^[2]. Below it, the proposal as reported commits no revenue to ENA purchases ^[7]. Crypto Briefing does not report Ethena's net revenue, so the dollar size of a 95% share is unknown. Investor unlocks ended on October 5 after the Foundation bought out locked ENA ^[8], and staker emissions reach zero after this month ^[1]. That stops two scheduled flows of ENA onto the market, while the protocol commits to buying ENA back only after USDe grows by more than half ^[2].