Wall Street buys ENA and MORPHO governance tokens

Several institutional firms purchased governance tokens for two major DeFi protocols in June, even after the sector logged $635 million in exploit losses during April and total value locked fell from $172 billion to $148 billion.

Coinbase Ventures and Janus Henderson acquired ENA, the governance token tied to Ethena’s synthetic-dollar system and the USDe stablecoin. Ethena routes through Coinbase’s user base and Coinbase serves as Ethena’s primary custodian, wallet provider and venue for perpetuals trading. USDe’s market capitalization was about $4.5 billion, up roughly 13% over 30 days, while ENA traded near $0.08 with a market cap around $750 million; ENA fell about 10% on the day Janus Henderson’s position was disclosed. Janus Henderson plans to use USDe for treasury cash management and to explore tokenized collateralized loan obligations with Centrifuge infrastructure.

Apollo, together with venture firms including Paradigm and a16z, participated in token-centered financing for Morpho. Morpho closed a $175 million round structured entirely around the MORPHO token, a deal that implied a protocol valuation of as much as $2 billion based on token market value. Apollo secured contractual rights to acquire up to 90 million MORPHO tokens over 48 months. The agreement includes transfer and trading restrictions and allows acquisitions via open-market purchases, over-the-counter transactions or other contractual arrangements.

Morpho reported more than $11 billion in deposits, about $6.43 billion in TVL and roughly $3.43 billion in active loans. The protocol lists institutional users including Bitwise, Galaxy, Anchorage Digital, Coinbase, Kraken and Binance. DeFiLlama data shows Morpho Blue generated roughly $39 million in gross protocol revenue in the second quarter.

Investors described the purchases as bets on governance tokens tied to protocols with institutional distribution and custody links. They positioned the tokens as governance rights rather than corporate equity or guaranteed claims on cash flows; realizing economic value from the tokens depends on whether token demand and governance relevance follow institutional adoption.

Analysts and protocol documents outlined multiple possible outcomes. In a scenario where institutional distribution expands, USDe supply and Morpho deposits could grow significantly. In a scenario involving another major exploit, a stablecoin depeg or regulatory restriction, USDe supply could fall by an estimated 30%–50% and MORPHO could decline even if protocol usage continues. A base case described by some observers anticipates adoption growth with uneven value accrual to tokens.

The transactions by Apollo, Paradigm, a16z, Janus Henderson, Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures and VanEck were cited by market participants as part of a trend to distinguish protocols embedded in institutional workflows from those valued mainly by headline TVL. Market observers noted that whether governance ownership converts into proportional economic value from the underlying rails remains an open question.