Athena Labs unveiled its 2025 roadmap on January 3, introducing a Telegram payments and savings app that leverages its sUSDe stablecoin.
The platform aims to provide a simplified digital banking experience directly via Telegram.
Athens Roadmap sets out ambitious plans to embrace traditional finance:
According to the roadmap, Telegram will enable users to send, spend, and save sUSDe directly within the messaging platform. The app will also integrate with Apple Pay, allowing for seamless transitions between sUSDe savings and mobile payments.
Athena’s roadmap also outlined its strategy to compete with Tether by shifting from a single asset source to the Athena Network, a platform designed for on-chain financial innovation.
“Rather than competing directly with payment companies in their own space, we plan to address the use case of payment and savings tools by building a dedicated application on Telegram and within the TON ecosystem,” Athena Labs wrote.
As part of this shift, the blockchain platform plans to launch iUSDe in February. iUSDe will be built on top of Athena’s synthetic dollar, sUSDe. It will include token-level transfer restrictions through a “simple wrapping contract.”
Partnering with traditional financial institutions to distribute iUSDe to their customers is a key priority for Q1 2025. Athena intends to announce these collaborations by the end of January.
Remarkable growth supported by strong partnerships:
Athena has achieved remarkable growth in the cryptocurrency sector, becoming the second fastest protocol to surpass $100 million in revenue. The network reached this milestone in just 251 days.
This puts it behind Solana meme coin platform Pump.fun, which reached the same number in 217 days.
In 2024, Athena made major developments, including the launch of USDtb in December, a stablecoin backed 90% by BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund.
Unlike USDe, USDtb features a cash-equivalent reserve model. It provides scalable and unrestricted transfers to enhance market stability.
The company has teamed up with Trump-backed World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which is linked to a governance proposal under review. If approved, sUSDe, the collateralized version of USDe, would serve as the underlying collateral asset on WLFI’s version of Aave.
Also, Ethena’s native token, ENA, has seen a sharp rise since December. The altcoin is up 33% over the past week, including a 15% surge after the roadmap announcement.
The roadmap also outlined several stablecoin-backed products set to launch this quarter, including perpetual products, prediction markets, gambling finance platforms, and unsecured lending.
These developments are in line with Ethena’s focus on expanding its presence within the decentralized finance ecosystem.