what's ethena?
Ethena is a synthetic dollar protocol built on Ethereum that offers a crypto-native stablecoin called USDe, which is backed by delta-hedged positions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other assets using perpetual futures contracts, alongside holdings in liquid stables like USDC and USDT. The protocol aims to provide a scalable, decentralized alternative to traditional fiat-backed stablecoins, enabling users to earn yield through sUSDe, a staked version of USDe that captures funding rates from hedging strategies. Key features include full backing of USDe reserves, integration across multiple chains like Solana and Sui, and recent expansions such as the launch of USDtb backed by BlackRock's BUIDL fund for enhanced institutional appeal. Ethena also powers whitelabel stablecoins like JupUSD in partnership with Jupiter on Solana, targeting DeFi and payments ecosystems. The native governance token ENA allows holders to participate in protocol decisions and capture value from network growth.
Ethena cut futures exposure to 11%, holds $2.83B assets, and is featured on Aragon's OTF dashboard.
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Reduced perpetual futures exposure from 90% to 11% of total position structure.
ENA is featured on the OTF (Ownership and Token Fundamentals) dashboard by AragonProject as of 2026-04-14, providing investors with analysis of ownership and value accrual mechanisms.
Holds $2.83B of assets with custodians offering limited transparency on effective exposure, in addition to onchain holdings.
Holds 161M USDTB onchain in USDe-related wallets, representing 18.5% of total USDTB supply.
Custodied $1.01B in total aggregate value of ETH, SOL, PYUSD, USDC, USDT, and USDb assets with Anchorage Digital Bank as of March 18, 2026.
Integrated as a supported stablecoin (USDe) for funding trading wallets in Mantle's ClawHack AI agent trading competition on the Byreal RealClaw platform, running from April 15, 2026 (00:00 UTC) to April 30, 2026 (23:59 UTC).
Integrated with Inverse Finance for DOLA/sUSDe liquidity gauge incentives, with 94K DOLA (~$93.5K) deposited on Votemarket for gauge voting.
USDe is integrated as base collateral on Ethereal DEX, a perpetual decentralized exchange.
Included in Grayscale's Q2 2026 "Assets Under Consideration" list.
Paid out $2.39 million in yield through sUSDe during the week ending April 10, 2026.
Expected to benefit from new product rollouts according to trader speculation.
ENA token increased 14% in price, leading top market movers.
Integrated with Sui network through suiUSDe, a stablecoin backed by Ethena that includes yield vaults.
Maple Institutional is providing 5.4% APY as a yield source for Ethena's sUSDe collateral.
Reached $11 billion in deposits across its protocol markets.
partnered with Alchemy Pay and Anchorage Digital
Users are borrowing PYUSD on Morpho to fund leverage loops, with PYUSD becoming the third largest stablecoin funding source for 5-14x leveraged DeFi carry trades behind USDC and USDT.
USDE-USD market on dYdX is being wound down following the approval of Governance Proposal 374 with 91.07% YES votes.
Smart contract admin keys allow a multi-sig to upgrade contracts and potentially steal user funds, posing a security risk.
ENA is the most traded stablecoin issuer token.
Integrated into OlympusDAO's OIP-195 proposal for deploying 10M USDe into Aave liquid leverage strategy with yield directed to OlympusDAO's buyback program.
Integrated USDe on Kraken Pro, allowing users to convert USD to USDe and earn up to 4.25% APY with no lockups.
Provides sticky liquidity to Ethena as part of yield generation strategies for the Avant Protocol stablecoin system.
Integrated with Matcha for sUSDe, syrupUSDT, wrsETH, and GHO trading on Mantle.
Fluid DEX processes up to 93% of the trading volume for the sUSDe/USDT pool.
Over 85% of sUSDe's underlying exposure is allocated to T-Bills as of March 2026.
Unlocks $15.79M representing 2.18% of circulating supply on April 5, 2026.
Q1 2026 revenue declined 32% amid user decline.
Hiring for a Financial Associate in Portugal and a remote, full-time Head of Security.
Unlocked 40.63M ENA to Foundation March 2, 2026, and $8.63M week of March 31 to April 6, 2026. BASED token airdrop claim available for sENA holders after March 30, 2026.
Generated over $50 million in revenue on March 26, 2026.
ENA token price increased 2% on March 26, 2026, leading top movers in the cryptocurrency market.
Whale (0x04d8) withdrew 43.49M ENA tokens worth $4.07M from Binance on 2026-03-23.
Registers $100M sUSDe outflow from Aave Ethereum as users shift to Aave on Mantle, where borrowing is available at 0.71% APY (versus 2.5% on Ethereum).
Integrated into Fluid's new USD vault which runs looped strategies on yield-bearing stablecoins including sUSDe.
Integrated with Privy to enable sUSDe rewards that accrue automatically within Privy wallets.
Whale 58bro.eth was liquidated on ENA short positions during a market rally on March 17, 2026, and subsequently deposited $7.81M USDC into Hyperliquid to open additional short positions.
A tracked public figure built a $22M+ short position on ENA at 10x leverage, currently showing +$483K unrealized profit and +2,823% ROI on Hyperliquid.
Aave increased its supply cap for PT srUSDe to $200 million, reaching $136 million in supply within a few hours after the increase.
sUSDe ranks as the third-largest Mantle asset by volume or value on Aave.
Replaced sUSDe unstaking from fixed 7-day cooldown to dynamic 1-7 day cooldown tied to USDe reserve liquidity, currently at 1 day.
Achieved $28 million in liquidity depth for srUSDe at 4.6-5.0% fixed APY on Pendle.
Reached $69M sUSDe liquidity depth at 3.5-3.7% fixed APY on Pendle, yielding ~3.5% from funding rates, ETH staking, and treasury reserves. Shifted focus toward institutional lending and structured credit, moving away from previous basis trade funding strategy, and proposes expanding USDe reserves to include institutional lending (Maple, Coinbase, Anchorage), high quality RWAs, prime lending, and whitelabel stablecoins backed by USDtb and BlackRock's BUIDL.
Achieved $65 million in liquidity depth for jrUSDe at 6.3-6.5% fixed APY on Pendle.
Received 4.47M ENA tokens (valued at approximately $453.57K) from the Ethena Labs Vesting contract to OKX Ventures on 2026-03-09, bringing their total holdings to 10.84M ENA (worth approximately $1.12M).
sSUSDe is now available as collateral in Tapioca DAO's mint markets, enabling users to deposit sSUSDe and borrow against it.
Added USDe and sUSDe PTs (June 2026 maturity) to Aave, enabling borrowing support and crosschain operations via Pendle Finance for farming on BNB Chain and redeeming on Plasma.
Deposited 6,500 ETH (approximately $12.58M) into Binance in the past 10 hours.
USDe cross-chain supply reached over $1.1 billion.
Integrated into Composer, a multi-chain coordination layer enabling atomic transactions across 18 protocols including Aave, Morpho, Euler, and Chainlink.
Partners with Reya for a 3-week trading competition offering 16,000,000 REYA tokens (0.20% of total supply) in rewards, running through 2026-03-27.
Launched USDe/OUSD liquidity pool on Curve Finance with a 30x USDe points multiplier.
Integrated with Wayfinder AI as an adapter in their SDK, enabling access to Ethena data through their Delta Lab queryable repository and backtesting framework.
Featured in Reya's livestream on 2026-03-06 discussing RLP and Ethena; held AMA discussing USDe perpetuals, prediction markets, and USDe margin rewards.
Wallets linked to Jez San moved 43.53M ENA ($4.71M) to new wallets two days before March 5, 2026.
Reached USDe market cap peak of $7.0B on March 10, 2026; sits at $5.877B as of April 1, 2026.
sUSDe achieved over $1 billion in monthly volume.
Integrated USDe/sUSDe into Reya's LP Pool (RLP) on 2026-03-04, generating dual yield; uses USDC as an active reserve component for Re protocol's reUSD, providing instant redemptions and shifting collateral to liquid stablecoins when funding rates fall below T-bills.
Identified as a top gainer among crypto majors on March 4, 2026.
Generated $96.15M in revenue during Q4 2025.
Has not yet activated the ENA token fee switch that would distribute protocol revenue to ENA holders.
Accounts for approximately 45% of all yield-bearing stablecoin rewards paid industry-wide as of February 2025.
Launched USDtb stablecoin with Anchorage Digital and BlackRock's BUIDL reserve; proposes USDe reserve overhaul to add real-world assets, equity, commodity basis, institutional, and prime lending. Spark allocated funds to Anchorage to earn 6.5% APY for CeFi yield diversification.
Offers PT-srUSDe/USDe on Strata Markets, earning 29.11% APY. Junior tranche yields 7.3%; senior tranche loops on Aave for up to 25%.
WLFI deployed $168.4M including ENA in 3 days via Wildcat Fi, offering 20x ethena rewards, 10% APR, and 200k ethereal points.
Unlocked 171 million ENA tokens ($18.35M) on March 5, 2026, representing 2.24% of circulating supply.
Listed USDe on Wildcat through Kappa Labs in an open-term market, offering 1,000,000 USDe capacity at 10% APR, routing liquidity to Ethereal DEX.
Added to the Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50), a benchmark tracking the top 50 eligible digital assets listed on Coinbase Exchange, in Q1 2026.
Vitalik Buterin sold 19,268 ETH (worth $38.77 million) at an average price of $2,012 over a 23-day period ending on February 26, 2026, converting the ETH into multiple Ethereum DeFi stablecoins including USDtb, GHO, EURC, PYUSD, and LUSD.
USDe is available for swapping on Relay Protocol, which has processed over $73M in volume and 47K+ transactions with 3-second average fills.
Distributed vePENDLE rewards for January including approximately 730k USDT plus sENA and RESOLV airdrops
Integrated stablecoin infrastructure directly into Conduit, a platform commanding 55% market share in Ethereum rollup deployments, enabling any Conduit-built rollup to deploy a native stablecoin on day one.
Launched USDm stablecoin on MegaETH day 0 as its native stablecoin, with MegaETH Foundation collecting rewards for buybacks.
Generated $666.82 million in fees last year, with $32.32 million becoming direct protocol revenue.
Reached 811,000+ active users and achieved integration across 24 blockchains.
sUSDe has paid $40.31M in cumulative yield, representing 18.85% of total yield-bearing stablecoin payouts.
USDe market cap reached $122.6M on Mantle as of Q4 2025.
Deployed $791 million, a multi-year low at 71% of its 2025 trough level, down from $1 billion, actively farming DeFi yields across PYUSD, RLUSD, and lending protocols.
sUSDe yields contracted, driven by basis trades declining over 60% from February 8 to March 10, 2026, from $2 billion to $800 million, and decreased funding rates; LP-sUSDe yields on Pendle range 3.5%-4.6%, with sUSDe APR at 3.44%.
Hiring full-time, remote Financial Associate (Portugal, €50K-€75K) and Head of Security.
Felix Protocol launched USDE-USDH perpetual contract with 20x maximum leverage and $7.5 million initial open interest cap.
Reduced LST (liquid staking token) exposure to low single digits in late 2025 and increased stable allocation including USDC and treasury-backed USDtb.
Achieved approximately 19% average sUSDe APY in 2024.
Partners with Strata Money to offer 30x Ethena Sats, 30x Strata points, and Ethereal Points for participants in Strata's yield program, with Strata's TGE scheduled for April 2026. Users deposit USDe to earn sUSDe through risk-tranched pools totaling $161M TVL.
Reached $65 million TVL on Ethereal DEX.
Pays 3.25% yield to USDe holders weekly.
Partnered with Ethereal DEX to provide backdated Ethena Exchange Points to Ethereal users.
Revenue increased by 690% over the 30-day period ending February 17, 2026.
Partners with Hyena to offer Lunar New Year packages ranging from 0.8 to 888 USDe for users.
Allocated capital to both Aave and Morpho protocols for USDC deployment.
USDe is integrated with LayerZero OFT standard for cross-chain transfers.
A frxUSD/USDe liquidity pool with KyberNetwork yields 14% APR and regularly processes daily trading volume exceeding its total value locked.
Identified as a top gainer among major cryptocurrencies on February 12, 2026.
A whale trader (wallet 0x418a) held a short position for 79 days, generating a $9.5M gain.
Offers USDe flexible subscription product on HTX with up to 15% APY yield.
sUSDe integration on Aptos has driven $750M+ in cumulative trading volume across ThalaSwap v2 and v3.
Launched USDe minting and redemption on HTX exchange on 2026-02-10.
Launched USDm stablecoin for MegaETH, backed by USDtb, which is backed by BlackRock's BUIDL fund, with reserve yield flowing into MEGA buybacks and used to subsidize sequencer fees.
Arthur Hayes sold 15.8M ENA tokens at $0.13, purchased at $0.23, realizing a $1.54M loss.
HTX exchange launched a promotional campaign offering $10,000 in rewards for USDe trading and user acquisition activities.