Ethena Labs’ ENA Token Gets a New Lease of Life as Wintermute Pitches Revenue Sharing

The Ethena Foundation signed off on Wintermute's proposal to share a portion of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol's revenues with tokenholders.

The Ethena Foundation has approved a proposal by market maker Wintermute to share a portion of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol’s revenues with tokenholders, according to Wintermute’s governance forum.

On Nov. 6, Wintermute proposed allocating a portion of Ethena’s fee revenue to stakers of ENA (ENA) , Ethena’s native token.

“The Ethena Foundation is pleased to share that the proposal to enable an $ENA fee switch has been approved by the Risk Committee,” it said in the governance forum on Nov. 15.

After the approval, Ethena’s governance page now shows that ENA stakers will receive a portion of the protocol’s fee revenue.

According to CoinMarketCap, Ethena Labs launched an interest-earning stablecoin called USDe in February, which users can mint against tokens including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), liquid staking derivatives, and other stablecoins. Ethena then hedges against the portfolio’s inherent volatility using offchain financial derivatives.

Since its launch, the stablecoin has seen rapid adoption, with its circulating supply soaring to nearly $3.2 billion, as reported by CoinMarketCap. Launched in April, Ethena’s ENA can be staked for sENA, which, before Wintermute’s governance proposal, lacked a clear value accrual mechanism.

“The Ethena Protocol has and continues to generate substantial amounts of real revenue, indicating a clear level of [product market fit] for USDe,” according to Wintermute’s Nov. 6 governance proposal.

“Unfortunately, sENA does not directly benefit from this revenue, resulting in an explicit disconnect between sENA holders and the growth of the protocol,” it added.

On Oct. 25, Wintermute started accepting USDe as collateral for spot crypto and derivatives trades.

Wintermute’s clients can now post “USDe as collateral for options, [credit default swaps], forward, and spot trading,” the company said in a post on the X platform.

The stablecoin joins Wintermute’s existing roster of accepted crypto collateral, which includes BTC, ETH, Solana (SOL), and USD Coin (USDC), Wintermute said.