New York – 11 November 2026 9AM ET – Katana today announced the acquisition of the Sushi deployment on Katana and Vault Bridge, the technology that allows users to generate yield on assets bridged to the chain. They join perpetuals exchange IDEX, which Katana acquired in March, bringing its core products fully in-house. Alongside the acquisitions, $KAT tokenomics are being updated so that fees from these products fund future programmatic open-market $KAT buybacks, with all purchased tokens going to stakers. Terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed.
On the acquisitions, Katana CEO Matthew Fisher said “This cycle taught every chain the same lesson in public: you can have the most apps in the world and still own nothing when they leave. We decided to flip the script. Katana bought its perps engine, its spot venue and its yield layer, brought the perps team in-house, and rewired $KAT to align usage and token value accrual. That’s not a roadmap. It’s done, with buybacks beginning later this year.”
Most blockchains rely on third-party applications for trading and yield, and the fees those applications generate leave the ecosystem. With today’s announcement, Katana owns the venues where activity on the chain happens: spot trading, perpetuals, and the yield layer underneath bridged capital. Revenue from that activity now stays on Katana, and a share of it will be programmatically routed to $KAT stakers.
The acquisitions
Katana Swap. Katana Swap is launching today, built on the Sushi contracts it acquired. The contracts are unchanged, but swap fees now remain within the Katana ecosystem. Swapping is native to the chain and available at https://dex.katana.network/swap.
Katana Perps. Katana acquired IDEX in March and brought on its leadership and engineering team, which has been building onchain trading products since 2017. IDEX pioneered the hybrid orderbook DEX and was the most-used application on Ethereum in 2018 and 2019, before adapting its stack for perpetuals. Katana Perps is live (in approved jurisdictions) and has recently shipped isolated margin and builder codes, which let partner applications integrate Katana Perps and earn on the trades they route. Its fees now feed the same buyback as the rest of the chain. Recurring biweekly trading competitions funded by protocol revenue are also available to users. Further markets, upgrades, and integrations may be launching later this year.
Vault Bridge. Vault Bridge is now fully integrated natively with Katana. On most chains, bridged assets sit idle until a user deploys them. Vault Bridge, with user approval, puts the capital underneath bridged assets to work, and the revenue it generates is reinvested into the Katana ecosystem.
Revenue from usage
With these acquisitions, Katana generates revenue from four sources, all tied to activity on the chain: swap fees, perpetuals fees, Vault Bridge, and sequencer fees. Until now, the large majority of Katana’s revenue was reinvested into ecosystem growth, including Yearn vaults, AMM pools and trading competitions, while $KAT holders saw only a portion of it.
Tokenomics update
Katana’s original token design used a three-token model in which holders locked $KAT into vKAT, voted on emissions each round and pursued vote incentives to earn. Following community feedback that the model was too complex, it is now being simplified. The following changes take effect on November 17, 2026:
- vKAT and emissions voting are being sunset. Staking $KAT into avKAT becomes the single way to participate.
- A share of fees from Katana Swap, Katana Perps, Vault Bridge and the sequencer will fund open-market $KAT buybacks, with 100% of purchased $KAT allocated to avKAT stakers.
- Buybacks will run on a set schedule at launch and move to fully automated onchain execution at a later date.
- The unstaking cooldown drops from 45 days to 7 days.
- vKAT holders can convert to avKAT in one click starting November 17.
Removing the voting layer allows Katana to route revenue from any product on the chain directly to stakers, and to add new revenue sources as they come online, whether from Katana-native products or from third-party builders. Because buybacks are funded by fees, they scale with how much the chain is used.
About Katana
Katana is an onchain financial markets company that hosts trading venues and the blockchain infrastructure that settles them. Its markets include Katana Perps for perpetual futures and Katana Spot for spot trading. Katana Perps was built by the team behind IDEX, which Katana acquired in 2026. Lending and credit markets on the network are provided by Morpho. Katana was incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR and launched mainnet in July 2025. For more information, please visit: https://katana.network/
Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is part of a sponsored/press release/paid content, intended solely for promotional purposes. Readers are advised to exercise caution and conduct their own research before taking any action related to the content on this page or the company. Coin Edition is not responsible for any losses or damages incurred as a result of or in connection with the utilization of content, products, or services mentioned.
