Ethena Seeks New Yield in Equity Perpetual Futures
Ethena, the creator of the $4 billion 'synthetic dollar' $USDe, is expanding its basis-trading strategy to equity perpetual futures. This move comes as it seeks new sources of returns after $USDe supply fell below $5 billion from a peak near $15 billion.
The protocol expects to announce its first exchange partners and deployments for the equity strategy in the coming weeks. Longer-term, it predicts that real-world asset perpetuals will overtake crypto derivatives in $USDe backing within 12 to 24 months.
Ethena's new strategy involves holding exposure to an asset, shorting its perpetual contract, and collecting funding paid by leveraged long traders. This trade has proven more lucrative in equity markets than in crypto this year, with funding rates averaging 14% on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance compared to low single digits for Bitcoin.
The protocol's co-founder, Guy Young, noted that the natural positive skew of funding distribution makes equity perps more attractive than crypto.