Overview
- Standard Chartered started formal coverage on Sept. 30, 2026 and published a $2 end‑2028 price target for ENA that implies roughly sevenfold upside from its late‑September trading level near $0.25.
- The bank’s valuation assumes USDe outstanding supply could grow to about $40 billion by 2028 and that on‑chain real‑world assets expand sharply, which would boost protocol revenue available for ENA support.
- Ethena has proposed a fee‑switch that would direct up to 95% of qualifying net revenue to recurring ENA buybacks once USDe crosses preset supply thresholds, with the first trigger at $7.5 billion and final approval set by governance.
- Analysts note Ethena has diversified USDe’s yield sources beyond crypto funding rates into institutional lending, tokenized equities and planned allocations to tokenized CLOs, and institutional infrastructure such as CME and CF Benchmarks for ENA has been added.
- The price case rests on execution and adoption risks: USDe must grow past the buyback thresholds, governance must implement the fee‑switch, and RWA growth, funding rates, custody and liquidity conditions must hold for the bank’s scenario to play out.