The Katana acquisition Sushi deal consolidates spot, perpetuals, and yield products, boosting $KAT token rewards and staking benefits.
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The Katana acquisition Sushi deal brings Sushi’s deployment on its network and Vault Bridge, its spot-trading and yield infrastructure, in-house, alongside a plan to direct more revenue toward $KAT stakers. Announced on November 11, 2026, the deals follow Katana’s purchase of perpetuals exchange IDEX in March 2026. A tokenomics overhaul takes effect on November 17, with buybacks set to begin later this year.
Summary
Key takeaways
- Katana now owns its core spot, perpetuals and bridged-asset yield products.
- A share of four revenue streams will finance $KAT buybacks.
- avKAT stakers will receive every token purchased through the buybacks.
- The unstaking wait will fall from 45 days to seven.
Katana acquisition Sushi deal brings core products in-house
Katana acquired Sushi’s Katana deployment and Vault Bridge technology, adding them to the IDEX business it purchased in March. The company says the acquisitions bring its core trading and yield products under its ownership, keeping revenue from those activities within the ecosystem.
The IDEX deal also brought its leadership and engineering team into Katana. That team has built onchain trading products since 2017. IDEX pioneered a hybrid orderbook decentralized exchange and was Ethereum’s most-used application in 2018 and 2019 before adapting its technology for perpetual futures.
Katana CEO Matthew Fisher described the strategy as buying the company’s trading and yield infrastructure while changing how activity connects to token rewards. He said Katana had “brought the perps team in-house, and rewired $KAT to align usage and token value accrual.”
Katana was incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR and launched its mainnet in July 2025. Morpho provides lending and credit markets on the network.
Katana Swap launches as Perps adds trading features
Katana Swap launched on November 11 using the Sushi contracts acquired in the deal. The contracts remain unchanged, but swap fees now stay within Katana’s ecosystem.
The Katana acquisition Sushi agreement makes spot swapping a native product alongside Katana Perps, its live perpetual futures venue built by the team behind IDEX.
The perpetuals platform has added isolated margin and builder codes. Those codes allow partner applications to integrate Katana Perps and earn revenue from trades they route. Users also have access to recurring biweekly trading competitions funded by protocol revenue.
$KAT tokenomics link fee revenue to staking rewards
A share of revenue from Katana Swap, Katana Perps, Vault Bridge and sequencer fees will fund open-market $KAT buybacks. All tokens purchased through that program—100%—will go to avKAT stakers.
The tokenomics changes take effect on November 17, 2026. Buybacks are scheduled to begin later this year and will initially run on a set schedule.
Until now, Katana says, it reinvested the large majority of revenue into ecosystem growth, including Yearn vaults, automated market maker pools and trading competitions. $KAT holders received only a portion.
The overhaul also removes the previous voting-based participation model. In the past, holders would lock $KAT into vKAT, cast votes on emissions every round, and chase voting incentives. Katana says community feedback identified that system as too complex.
vKAT and emissions voting are being retired, leaving staking $KAT into avKAT as the single participation method. Seven days will replace the previous 45-day unstaking cooldown, and starting November 17, vKAT holders can switch to avKAT with a single click.
Katana says removing the voting layer allows revenue from products across the chain to flow directly to stakers. Because fees finance the buybacks, their scale is tied to usage.
Vault Bridge puts bridged capital to work
Vault Bridge is now fully and natively integrated with Katana, generating yield from the capital underlying bridged assets with user approval.
Rather than leaving that capital idle until users deploy it, the technology puts it to work. Revenue generated through Vault Bridge is reinvested into the Katana ecosystem.
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Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
