Ethena's RWA Perps Expansion Could Spark Scalable Basis Yield Opportunities

Ethena's yield product, USDe, is expanding its collateral backing to include equity perpetuals (perps), also known as RWA (real-world asset) tokenization perps. The RWA perps market has grown 10x to $6 billion in Open Interest since March and could potentially grow 100x bigger.

This move marks the second wave of diversification for USDe, which currently has a 32% share of its collateral backing in liquid stablecoins (e.g. USDT, USDC) and 31% in DeFi lending through Aave and Morpho.

Ethena's founder, Guy Young, said that the project delayed expanding into RWA perps to allow the market to develop deeper liquidity, stating 'We took a cautious approach to what was a nascent market and waited until we saw deep, liquid markets with a data history we could study before moving into the opportunity at scale.'