We report a strategy for regulating the rate of internally- bound anion exchange within an Fe4L6 metal-organic tetrahedron through external coordination of tripodal tris(alkylammonium) cations. The cage features three flexible 18-crown-6 receptors at each of its FeII vertices, facilitating strong tritopic interactions with tris(ammonium) cations to 'cap' the vertices of the tetrahedron. This capping mechanism restricts the flexibility of the cage framework, thereby reducing the rate of anion

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... hange within its central cavity by 20-fold. Thus, we demonstrate the first use of an externally-bound multivalent effector to allosterically control internal guest binding in a molecular cage.