Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Ethena (ENA) may be one of the most remarkable tokens in recent times.
According to Bitget market data, after hitting a low of 0.194 USDT in early September, ENA rebounded to touch 1.33 USDT yesterday, achieving an increase of nearly 600% in the past two months.
The reasons can be attributed to various factors. For example, the rise in contract funding rates during the bull market has significantly boosted Ethena's protocol income, and the supply of USDe has also grown noticeably; additionally, there is support for ENA purchases from the Trump family project World Liberty; expectations for the opening of the ENA fee switch promoted by Wintermute; and direct cooperation with BlackRock BUIDL to launch the new stablecoin product USDtb... Furthermore, the expectation of airdrops for those holding and staking ENA is regarded as a key reason for the continuous rise of this token.
Previously, two major projects closely related to USDe, Ethereal and Derive (formerly Lyra), officially announced that they would airdrop tokens to sENA holders (i.e., ENA stakers). Ethereal plans to airdrop 15% of its token supply, while Derive plans to airdrop 5% of its token supply. Currently, users holding sENA on-chain can directly view the 'mining' status of these two projects on the Ethena homepage.
Last week, Ethereal's official held a community conference call, outlining Ethereal's roadmap, features, advantages, and airdrop situation. Notably, Ethereal's developers have clearly taken note of the impressive performance of another strong project, Hyperliquid, and mentioned that Ethereal hopes to create a 'one-stop trading service' similar to Hyperliquid.
Ethereal: The first airdrop project in the Ethena ecosystem
Ethereal made its debut on September 30 of this year.
At that time, Ethereal founder Fells initiated a related proposal at Ethena, suggesting the construction of an on-chain trading venue supporting spot and derivatives trading around USDe. On one hand, Ethena could profit from the utility expansion of USDe, while on the other hand, Ethereal could seize the ecological hub position early in the growth phase of USDe.
From an architectural perspective, Ethereal will serve as Layer 3 based on the Ethena network; from a business perspective, in addition to being equipped with a complete trading system, Ethereal will also support the deployment of other applications related to USDe (such as lending).
To gain the support of the Ethena community and deepen the binding relationship, Ethereal stated in its initial proposal that it would allocate 15% of its tokens for airdrop to ENA stakers.
Latest update: Learning from Hyperliquid
In the latest community conference call, Ethereal team members emphasized Hyperliquid, believing that the key to the project's success lies in 'providing a complete set of trading services,' addressing the hidden pain points of users needing to switch different applications while executing different operations, thus aiding user and capital retention.
In response, Ethereal founder Fells also redefined Ethereal's positioning — 'a one-stop product supporting all DeFi operations', where users can conduct spot or contract trading, rate arbitrage, lending, options, and even prediction operations, while benefiting from stable income through sUSDe (staked USDe).
Fells added that he hopes to create a user experience for Ethereal similar to that of a centralized exchange (CEX), while Ethereal will maintain complete non-custodial and decentralized features. For example, Ethereal will abstract the payment of gas fees through specific design, allowing users not to sign each transaction or pay gas fees.
Timeline: Mainnet launch in Q1
According to the timeline mentioned in the conference call, Ethereal expects the following development pace:
Testnet release: Expected next month;
Testnet suspension;
Mainnet launch: Expected in Q1 2025;
Falls also mentioned that Ethereal's concrete features will be rolled out in phases, starting with USDe perpetual contract trading, followed by combined margin models, lending, and spot trading, with related services likely to go live in the first half of 2025. Additionally, at the launch, Ethereal will only support trading of a few blue-chip tokens, and after user and liquidity accumulation, a batch of new trading pairs will be launched each week.
Ethena's ecosystem expansion
Ethena's ecological landscape is rapidly expanding. In addition to Ethereal mentioned in this article, the derivatives project Derive, which originated from the options protocol Lyra, will also launch its token in the first quarter of next year while airdropping 5% of the tokens to sENA holders.
Benefiting from the positive sentiment of the bull market, the funding rates in the contract market have remained high, driving up the yields of both the Ethena protocol and sUSDe. As of the time of writing, the supply of USDe has approached the $6 billion mark, with a real-time yield of 27%.
Meanwhile, the new stablecoin product USDtb, co-launched by Ethena and BlackRock BUIDL, has also addressed Ethena's biggest shortcoming — the protocol itself and sUSDe will temporarily exhibit negative returns during negative fee rate periods. The structure of USDtb is similar to traditional RWA stablecoins, with its stability supported by reserve assets and returns derived from government bond interest rates. In the future, as the supply of this stablecoin increases, Ethena will gain a reliable hedging window during negative fee rate periods or when fee rate returns are lower than government bond yields, thus mitigating the risks of the protocol being adversely affected by negative fee rates.
Famous crypto figure and BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes predicted earlier this year that 'USDe will surpass USDT to become the largest dollar stablecoin.' Although there is still a gap of several tens of times in supply scale between the two, considering Ethena's current sustainable high yield and ecological expansion speed, this is not impossible. If this expectation can be realized, early adopters like Ethereal that occupy ecological hub positions will inevitably benefit, thereby creating value feedback for ENA.
