$USDe Expands Collateral Backing into Equity Perpetuals

Ethena's $USDe yield product is expanding its collateral backing to include equity perpetuals (RWA perps) on a larger scale than ever before.

The move follows the growth of RWA perps, which have increased by 10 times to $6 billion in Open Interest since March. Ethena's founder Guy Young said they delayed entering this market due to its nascent state and wanted to see deeper liquidity develop before expanding at scale.

The RWA perps market is expected to grow 100x bigger, offering a scalable basis yield opportunity not tied to the cyclical crypto market. With an underlying asset base of over $150 trillion compared to just $2.5 trillion in crypto, this expansion marks the most significant extension of the basis allocation to date.

The current collateral backing of $USDe is comprised mostly of liquid stablecoins (32%) and DeFi lending (31%), but Ethena expects RWA perps to surpass crypto allocations within 12-24 months. Basis trade involves locking a spread between an asset's spot price and its futures contract, which only works during bull markets.

The project has been aggressively upgrading its ecosystem ahead of the next bull run, and whether this round of yield diversification will boost demand for $USDe remains to be seen.