Ethena looks beyond crypto to squeeze yield from booming equity perpetuals
Ethena is expanding its yield-generating strategy from crypto assets to equity perpetual futures to capitalize on higher funding rates. This move follows a decline in USDe supply and a major overhaul of the ENA token economics.
Why it matters
This shift reflects a broader trend of decentralized finance protocols seeking more stable and lucrative yield sources outside of volatile crypto markets.
The protocol said Friday it plans to expand its basis-trading strategy into equity perpetual futures, whose open interest has ballooned to $6.2 billion from less than $1 billion in March. Funding rates on those contracts averaged roughly 14% on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance in the past months, compared with low single digits for bitcoin over the same period, according to Ethena.
Ethena expects to announce its first exchange partners and deployments for the equity strategy in the coming weeks. Longer-term, it expects real-world asset perpetuals to overtake crypto derivatives in USDe backing within 12 to 24 months.
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