The Amazing Rise of Ethena-USDe and Its Impact on the DeFi Ecosystem

Recently, the total issuance of USDe has shown a significant rise, soaring from 2.4 billion USD to 3.8 billion USD, with a monthly increase of over 58%. This growth is mainly driven by the optimistic market sentiment following Bitcoin's new highs, leading to an increase in funding rates, which in turn enhances the staking yield of USDe. Although there has been a slight pullback recently, the annualized yield reported by a data platform remains at a high level of around 25%.

At the same time, a well-known DeFi protocol has also become a beneficiary of this rise. The daily income of this protocol has increased by over 200% compared to a month ago, reaching a historic high. This rise is closely related to the development of Ethena. On one hand, the high staking yield of USDe has stimulated the lending demand for sUSDe and PT assets. The total scale of borrowing a certain stablecoin with sUSDe and PT as collateral on a lending platform has reached 570 million USD, with a borrowing utilization rate exceeding 80% and an annualized deposit yield as high as 12%. In the past month, the loan increment issued through this lending platform has exceeded 300 million USD.

On the other hand, the borrowing demand for sUSDe and PT has indirectly driven up the usage rate of certain stablecoins in other channels, with the deposit rate of a certain lending platform reaching 8.5%. The balance sheet shows that the total loans issued to the two main lending platforms through specific modules are close to 2 billion USD, accounting for 40% of total assets. These two alone have generated an annualized income of 203 million USD for the protocol, equivalent to a daily contribution of 550,000 USD, accounting for 54% of the total annualized income.

Ethena has become the core driving force behind this wave of DeFi revival. The optimism brought by Bitcoin's new highs has pushed up funding rates, which in turn affects the USDe staking yields. A certain DeFi protocol, leveraging a complete capital flow chain and the "central bank attributes" brought by special modules, has become an important support for the USDe ecosystem. At the same time, a certain lending platform has played the role of a "lubricant" in this process. These three protocols constitute the core of the rise, while other DeFi protocols such as a certain lending platform, a certain DEX, and a certain derivatives platform have also benefited from the growth of USDe to varying degrees.

In this rise spiral, almost every participant benefits from it. USDe's leveraged miners and lenders can achieve high but volatile returns through leverage, while users of certain stablecoin deposits receive higher and relatively stable yields. Low-risk arbitrageurs earn the spread by staking BTC, ETH LST minting or borrowing certain stablecoins, while advanced players obtain excess returns through a combination of DeFi protocols. Meanwhile, each protocol also reaps higher TVL, income, and token prices.

However, the key to whether this rise can be sustained lies in whether the interest rate spread between USDe and a certain stablecoin will exist in the long term. Influencing factors include: whether the bullish sentiment can persist, whether Ethena can achieve higher APY allocation efficiency through improvements in its economic model and market share increase, and the competition for market share from rivals.

Despite concerns about security raised by a specific module of a DeFi protocol, from a balance sheet perspective, this mechanism does not directly cause a certain stablecoin to become an undercollateralized stablecoin. However, it does introduce some increased risks, such as a high module ratio possibly causing a certain stablecoin to once again become a "shadow stablecoin," and the operational risks of Ethena may be transmitted to a certain stablecoin, while also potentially lowering the overall collateralization rate of a certain stablecoin.