Ethena Diversifies USDe with Equity Perps, Aims for Scalable Basis Yield Opportunity

Ethena's yield product, USDe, is expanding its collateral backing to include real-world asset (RWA) tokenization perps, also known as equity perps. This move aims to provide a scalable basis yield opportunity that's not tied to the cyclical crypto market.

The RWA perps market has grown 10x to $6B in Open Interest since March and is expected to grow 100x bigger. This offers a significant expansion of the basis allocation, which currently stands at >$150 trillion compared to ~$2.5 trillion of crypto.

Ethena's founder, Guy Young, stated that they delayed the RWA perps expansion to allow the nascent market to develop deeper liquidity. He also emphasized that this segment is 'one of the very few 100x left' and could surpass global crypto's volume and Open Interest (OI) in 24 months.

The protocol expects its RWA perps backing to outpace crypto basis in a year or two, with currently most of the collateral backing being in liquid stablecoins (32%) and DeFi lending (31%).