Ethena

Ethena announced partnerships with Coinbase, Janus Henderson, Securitize, and Centrifuge to diversify USDe's reserve backing and distribution. The initiatives added AAA-rated CLOs to reserves (raising RWA backing from 0% to 11%), brought institutional allocations through Janus Henderson's treasury and ETP distribution, and launched a Coinbase yield vault lending USDC against Ethena-powered collateral—reversing USDe's 70% supply contraction since October 2025 by broadening collateral beyond crypto-native yield into institutional lending and real-world credit.

Ramil argues that nearly all major perpetual exchanges use a frozen interest-rate (IR) component of 0.01% per 8 hours (10.95% APR) inherited from BitMEX's March 2017 Bitfinex lending average—a temporary measure that became permanent industry standard. The fixed IR overcharges longs by 5-7 percentage points versus actual carry costs (BTC fair IR ~4.3%, ETH ~2.1%), with a formula "dead zone" clamp that prevents market correction, structurally enriching shorts and enabling delta-neutral harvesting strategies like Ethena. Dropping the clamp and setting per-market IRs calibrated to current borrowing rates would restore proper spot-perp convergence.

Moya argues DeFi has all the ingredients for currency carry trades—stablecoins in multiple denominations, composable lending, permissionless execution—but nobody runs them because the economics don't work. FX looping at current Aave V3 rates generates -0.09% net APY versus sUSDe's +6.82%, destroying rather than creating value; unlike yield-bearing assets like stETH or sDAI, currency spreads lack native protocol yield to anchor returns. Viable on-chain FX carry requires yield-bearing stablecoins like EUTBL listed on major protocols and institutional-grade hedging infrastructure—neither exists yet despite macroeconomic conditions favoring the trade.

Nay notes that StablecoinX, Ethena's treasury vehicle, accumulated 20.3% of ENA supply in under a year through a structure where investors provided cash and ENA across two PIPE rounds, raising questions about the buyback mechanism's execution and impact.