Standard Chartered Forecasts ENA at $2 by 2028

Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Ethena’s governance token ENA and set a year-end 2028 target of $2, with interim targets of $0.42 at end-2026 and $1.10 at end-2027. The bank’s forecast would outpace its expected gains for Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period, conditional on specific protocol developments.

The bank’s valuation assumes Ethena can restore and then greatly expand USDe supply, broaden sources of revenue beyond its original basis trading strategy, and channel a rising share of net protocol revenue to ENA buybacks once fee-switch thresholds are met.

USDe launched in late 2023 by pairing long spot crypto positions with short perpetual futures, capturing funding payments while remaining largely delta-neutral. That structure helped USDe and its yield-bearing counterpart sUSDe attract more than $10 billion of deposits at peak. As funding rates compressed and the trade became crowded, USDe supply declined to about $4.9 billion. Standard Chartered estimates Ethena’s blended yield across strategies at roughly 5.2% today.

To offset weaker crypto basis returns, Ethena has diversified its yield sources. Current activities include DeFi lending, institutional lending, liquid stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and new basis trades tied to equities and commodities. The protocol is also developing white-label stablecoins and a payments product called Ethena Pay.

A key element in the bank’s model is Ethena’s approved fee-switch framework. The framework begins to direct revenue toward the Ethena Foundation and ENA buybacks once USDe supply reaches $7.5 billion. Under the rules, 95% of qualifying net revenue paid to the foundation from covered businesses is earmarked for ENA buybacks. Independent modeling cited by the bank projects the protocol’s share of gross revenue rising with USDe supply, from about 5% near $7.5 billion to roughly 20% by $20 billion using an illustrative 6% protocol yield.

Standard Chartered models a scenario in which USDe supply reaches $40 billion by 2028. In that scenario, the bank estimates ENA purchases could equal about 23% of the token’s current market value annually if the token price remained unchanged. The bank expects investors would incorporate expected buyback streams into ENA’s valuation, which would change buybacks as a share of market capitalization over time.

The bank highlights several constraints. Ethena must first pass the $7.5 billion fee-switch threshold and regain its prior $10 billion-plus peak. The protocol then needs to show its newer yield strategies can absorb far larger capital inflows without materially compressing returns. The higher revenue-capture tiers in the fee framework have not been tested at the scales modeled, and the 6% protocol yield used in illustrations is not guaranteed. Increasing the share of revenue directed to ENA buybacks could reduce yields available to sUSDe holders, creating a trade-off between buybacks and deposit incentives.

Standard Chartered’s projection also relies on broader growth in tokenized assets. The bank uses assumptions that tokenized assets could expand from roughly $350 billion today to about $4 trillion by the end of 2028, and that real-world assets on blockchains could grow from about $40 billion to $2 trillion. Nearer-term checkpoints for the market to reach the bank’s valuation include USDe crossing the $7.5 billion threshold and Ethena demonstrating that its diversified yield strategies can scale while maintaining competitive yields.