Ethena is extending the basis trade behind its USDe stablecoin into equity perpetual futures, chasing funding yields more than five times higher than Bitcoin's. The pivot comes as USDe supply has fallen from nearly $15 billion to about $4 billion, and a new governance proposal ties ENA buybacks directly to how fast that supply recovers.
Ethena revealed plans on Aug. 28 to extend its basis strategy into equity perpetual futures, where open interest has surged to about $6.2 billion from less than $1 billion in March. Funding rates in this market have averaged about 14% on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance in recent months, against Bitcoin perpetual funding that averaged 2.2% this year through Aug. 11, down from 4.9% in 2025 and 11% in 2024.
Falling crypto yields push Ethena toward equities
Ethena founder Guy Young said equity and commodity-linked perpetual futures have become one of the protocol's biggest potential growth markets. The expansion widens the pool of assets available to its basis strategy from a crypto market worth about $2.5 trillion to more than $120 trillion of equities.
The shift follows a sharp deterioration in the trade that originally scaled USDe. Crypto basis positions had declined to around 13% of USDe's backing as of press time, forcing Ethena to lean on other allocations. DeFi lending accounts for about $1.26 billion, or 30.8% of reserves, generating yields as low as 3.1%, while institutional credit pays as much as 7%. However, funding rate income on equity perpetuals could still compress as more capital enters the short side.
Buybacks now hinge on USDe's recovery
Ethena is tying future ENA purchases to whether USDe can rebuild the supply it lost this year. USDe fell from roughly $5.92 billion in March to $3.90 billion by the end of April, then climbed to about $4.06 billion by Aug. 28. A governance proposal unveiled Aug. 27 would start directing 95% of net Foundation revenue toward ENA buybacks once USDe reaches $7.5 billion, with the share rising further at $10 billion, $15 billion and $20 billion.
At current supply, USDe still needs to grow about 86% to hit that first threshold. Meanwhile, ENA traded around $0.163 on Aug. 28, up about 11.6% over 24 hours and nearly 99% over the past 30 days, with trading volume exceeding $2 billion. The token's rally has outpaced the stablecoin recovery it depends on, leaving Ethena's equity expansion as the latest attempt to close that gap.
Source: CryptoSlate
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