ENA climbed more than 5% on the morning its final investor tranche became free to trade. The scheduled release is modest next to a 3 billion token block that sits behind a five-day notice clause.
Supply events usually weigh on a token in the hours they arrive. Ethena's did the opposite on Monday.
ENA traded at $0.2552 early Monday, up 5.6% from $0.2413 at midnight UTC, after ranging between $0.2364 and $0.2579. The move came on the date the Ethena Foundation had set, in an update published in late August, as the end of investor lockups: as of Oct. 5, no investor tokens remain locked. Team vesting continues on its own schedule.
The tranche scheduled for Monday totals 171.88 million ENA, split between 93.75 million for core contributors and 78.13 million for investors. At Monday's price that is about $43.9 million of tokens, equal to roughly 2% of ENA's $2.03 billion market value. Ethena itself has not put a figure on the release.
Why the overhang looked smaller than feared
Two developments in the run-up help explain why the day passed quietly. In its August update, the Foundation said it had repurchased the still-locked allocations of any investor that sold tokens after Oct. 10, 2025, reducing the pool of holders with both the means and the motive to sell on day one. It did not disclose the amount. In the days before the unlock, wallets associated with the team also withdrew about $68 million of ENA from centralized exchanges, a pattern more consistent with holding than with preparing to sell.
A third reading is mechanical. Traders who had shorted ENA ahead of the date may have been closing positions once the release arrived without a wave of sell orders. The price action alone cannot distinguish these explanations, and the gain should not be read as proof that the supply has been absorbed.
The bigger block
The scheduled tranche is not the largest supply question facing the token. A waiver covering about 3.03 billion ENA held by StablecoinX also took effect on Oct. 5. Under the terms disclosed in a regulatory filing, any sale of those tokens requires the Foundation's written consent and five business days' notice.
At $0.2552, that block is worth about $773 million, roughly 18 times the value of Monday's scheduled release. The notice clause means the earliest a sale could follow a notice delivered on Monday is Oct. 12. Whether and when StablecoinX seeks consent is now the variable that matters most for ENA's supply over the coming weeks.
What to watch: On-chain movement from the newly released investor wallets over the next several sessions, and any notice of sale under the StablecoinX waiver. A notice would start a five-business-day clock that the market would likely trade well before it expires.