ENA Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

The MrNasdog Pressure Framework reads Ethena (ENA) at +28.68% net over the last 90 days and +2.10% over the next 90. Unlocks put 3.85B ENA into the float, most of it on Oct 5 2026, when Ethena released the last investor coins and the rest of the Foundation and ecosystem shares at once; nothing was bought back or burned. After that one big day, only the core team's 93.75M ENA a month is still locked, so the ENA supply curve flattens sharply from here.

The verdict, in one paragraph

ENA supply grew +28.68% in the 90 days to Oct 13 2026, measured against the 13.41B ENA circulating today, and is projected to grow +2.10% in the next 90 days. The supply monitor reads +40.16% for the same window, a gap of 11.48 percentage points, which is over our 0.5-point line, so the coin page shows a monitor-gap note. The deep walk found the same coins on both sides: the monitor's supply rose 3,841.3M ENA and our dated unlock calendar adds 3,845.3M. The whole difference is the base: the monitor divides by the 9.56B ENA circulating in mid-July, we divide by today's 13.41B. In one line: Ethena is a token that emptied most of its unlock calendar in a single day and now has one small monthly unlock left.

Sell pressure: where new ENA comes from

Protocol inflation is 0. Exactly 15B ENA existed at both ends of the window. The ENA contract does keep an owner-only mint of up to 10% of supply once a year, and that owner is a timelock, but the mint has never been used and ENA stakers are not paid in new coins. So every new ENA in the float comes from coins that already existed and were locked.

Vesting unlocks are the big row: 2.13B ENA. Ethena's core team and investors each got a 25% cliff after one year and then 36 monthly tranches, and the Foundation and ecosystem shares also unlocked monthly. Three regular monthly rounds of 267.19M ENA landed on Aug 5, Sep 5 and Oct 5 2026, adding 801.56M. Then, under the Foundation's Aug 27 2026 plan, the investor calendar was closed early: the last 1.33B investor coins, which were due month by month into 2028, all unlocked on Oct 5 2026. Investors received 1.41B ENA that day in total.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks add 1.72B ENA. The Foundation and ecosystem shares still had 18 monthly rounds of 95.31M left, and on Oct 5 2026 they came free together with the investor coins. On the same day the lock-ups on the roughly 3.03B ENA that a listed treasury company bought from Ethena also ended. Ethena itself now describes only about 12% of supply as still locked, and that is the core team's share.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is 0. No estate or trustee holds ENA. The treasury company's coins already sat inside the circulating count, so the end of its lock adds nothing on top of the Foundation row; it still needs the Foundation's written consent to sell, and the Foundation may buy first.

Buy pressure: where new ENA goes

The programmatic buyback is 0 today. In September 2026 ENA holders approved the Ethena fee switch: up to 95% of the Foundation's net revenue will buy ENA on the market, with a take of 5% of protocol revenue at $7.5B of USDe, rising to 20% at $20B. But it only starts when USDe averages $7.5B over 14 days, and USDe was near $4.77B on Oct 12 2026. Ethena has also not said whether bought ENA will be burned, held or locked.

The protocol fee burn is 0. Ethena's revenue pays USDe stakers, partners and the reserve fund; none of it destroys ENA. The supply stayed at 15B and the dead address held the same 2.63 ENA at both ends of the window.

The Foundation buy row is 0. In August 2026 the Foundation bought locked coins from seed investors who had been selling, but those coins were not yet circulating when bought, so the deal took nothing off the market; they were released with the rest on Oct 5 2026. The new long-term lock row is also 0: staked ENA fell from 1.02B to 973M over the window, and staked coins count as circulating anyway.

Foundation and overhang

The only ENA still outside the float is the core team's 1.59B ENA, which unlocks at 93.75M a month from Nov 2 2026 to Mar 2028. Everything else can now trade, and four large holders are worth watching. An Ethena custody wallet holds about 1.24B ENA, down from 1.36B in July. The treasury company holds about 3.03B ENA across three wallets, untouched for the whole window, but any sale needs the Foundation's consent and five business days' notice. The Foundation also holds the investor coins it bought back in August, an amount it has not published. And once the fee switch starts, the wallet that receives bought ENA becomes one more balance to track. We read these balances on-chain at each rebuild; if any of them falls between rebuilds, the outflow is added to the Foundation row of the sell side at the next refresh.

How ENA compares to other DeFi governance tokens

Most DeFi governance tokens with a fixed 15B-style cap behave like ENA did until October: no mint, no burn, and a steady monthly unlock that the market has to absorb. What makes Ethena unusual is that it pulled almost two years of investor, Foundation and ecosystem unlocks into one day. Tokens that keep the monthly calendar, such as many layer-2 and lending tokens, carry the same total supply risk spread out over time; ENA took the hit at once and now has a much smaller monthly flow than those peers.

On the buy side, ENA sits behind the DeFi tokens that already route fees into buybacks, such as exchange tokens and perpetual-trading tokens that buy every day. Ethena's fee switch is voted in but tied to USDe growth, so ENA has no working buyer until its stablecoin grows by more than half. Compared with tokens that burn part of every fee, ENA has no burn at all; its only future sink is a buyback whose coins may or may not be destroyed.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The core team unlocks 93.75M ENAon Nov 2 2026, Dec 2 2026 and Jan 2 2027, the only scheduled ENA unlocks left in this window. Watch USDe supply: the fee switch starts only when its 14-day average reaches $7.5B, and it would add a buyer for the first time. Watch the treasury company's three wallets and the Ethena custody wallet, since their locks are gone and any sale would show on-chain first. Watch the Foundation for a decision on whether bought ENA will be burned, and for the master agreement that moves Ethena Labs' protocol rights to the Foundation, which Ethena said it would publish in October 2026.

Summary

ENA supply grew +28.68% in 90 days because Ethena released 3.85B ENA of locked coins, most of it in one day on Oct 5 2026, with no buyback or burn on the other side. With the investor, Foundation and ecosystem calendars now empty, only the core team's 93.75M ENA a month remains, so the next 90 days project a much smaller +2.10%. The key risk is that the newly free coins, including the treasury company's 3.03B, are sold into the market; the cap is 15B ENA, with a never-used 10% yearly mint as the only way above it. A real ENA buyer arrives only if USDe grows past $7.5B and the fee switch turns on.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of ENA, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 13 2026.