Ether.fi (ETHFI) Buyback Proposal Vote Ends Sept. 3 With $16M Annualized Funding

Cash Spending Tops $100 Million

Ether.fi's Cash card posted $100.3 million in spending for July, an 85% jump from $54.3 million in January — the clearest sign yet that the staking protocol's expansion into PayFi, the pairing of on-chain payments with crypto-native yield, is gaining traction. Payment tracking compiled by Paymentscan shows monthly active addresses climbed 83% over the same window, from 21,898 to 40,040, while spend per address barely moved, edging from $2,479 to $2,505. The composition matters: growth came from a wider user base, not heavier usage — monthly transactions per address actually fell 22%, offset by a 29% rise in average ticket size. Ether.fi Cash's share of the tracked card-spending market edged from 9.5% to 9.7% in a market that itself expanded 81%, meaning the card roughly kept pace with a fast-growing category rather than outgrowing it; Paymentscan cautions that its coverage blends in self-reported offchain data and excludes some card programs, so absolute figures carry sampling caveats. The milestone lands three weeks after the Ether.fi (ETHFI) token issuer's Aug. 13 summer release, which folded tokenized stock and metal trading, an integrated Aave lending market and support for more than 30 currencies and payment rails into a single app. Management reported more than 500,000 members and a $2 billion annualized trading volume run-rate at launch. The account design is deliberately sticky: customers park assets in self-custodied vaults, borrow against them through a dedicated Aave market to fund card purchases without selling, and trade crypto alongside tokenized assets — a loop that converts every swipe into fees across multiple business lines.

How the $16M Buyback Would Work

On Aug. 30 the Ether.fi Foundation put a buyback proposal to governance: contributions from card, swap and staking revenue would fund weekly ETHFI purchases executed through CoW Swap. Mechanics run through Labs, which collects fiat card fees, converts them to USDC and posts the contributions on the blockchain. Using July data, the proposal's worked example pegs contributions at $1.33 million per month — about $16 million annualized — a figure still subject to approval and calculated before any user-reward allocation. The document sketches the fee flow: a $10,000 swap at a 0.5% fee produces $50, of which Labs retains $20 while the remaining $30 buys ETHFI, split evenly between the foundation treasury ($15) and user rewards ($15). To backstop reward shortfalls, the proposal authorizes drawing up to 20 million treasury ETHFI, with the foundation able to adjust the reward split, fee sharing and purchase cadence. The revenue base behind the plan is shifting in Cash's favor. DefiLlama's published adapter estimates card revenue at 1.38% of spending — roughly $13.8 million pre-cost per $1 billion of annualized volume — while a July 14 Aave governance proposal set the dedicated lending market's protocol-fee split at 80% Ether.fi and 20% Aave, excluding loan principal and interest owed to lenders. Research compiled by Alea Research puts rolling 30-day annualized revenue at $38.5 million as of Aug. 30, with Cash contributing $17.6 million; Cash's share of monthly revenue jumped from 17% in January to 46% in July even as total tracked revenue slid 22% on softer staking and a weaker ETH price. Price, however, has diverged: ETHFI rallied 45% between Aug. 13 and Aug. 30 to $0.55, yet remains 21% below its Jan. 1 level — a $545 million reference valuation on the 1 billion maximum supply, or 14.2 times tracked annualized revenue. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

1M ETHFI Quorum in Focus

The buyback vote closed on Sept. 3, with 1 million ETHFI set as quorum; the Aug. 31 snapshot recorded voting power near 245,800 ETHFI — roughly 25% of the threshold — and neither the final tally nor an execution timeline has been confirmed. Our read: the ballot is the mechanism test for whether Cash's operating growth can reach the token, but the $16 million annualized anchor equals only 2.9% of the reference valuation, ETHFI holders carry no equity claim on Ether.fi Labs, and a 25% turnout raises governance questions for the wider altcoin market. ETHFI spot added 5.2% over the past 24 hours as traders waited on the recorded outcome for the Ether.fi ecosystem.