Original title: (Ethereal, the first airdrop project in the Ethena ecosystem, can it replicate the miracle of Hyperliquid?)
Original author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Ethena (ENA) may be one of the most outstanding tokens in recent times.
Bitget market shows that since dipping to 0.194 USDT in early September, it rebounded to 1.33 USDT yesterday, with ENA achieving an increase of nearly 600% over the past two months.
The reasons can be found in various answers. For example, the rising funding rate in the bull market boosts Ethena's protocol revenue significantly, and the supply of USDe also shows a notable increase. Additionally, the Trump family's project World Liberty supports ENA purchases; the expectation of the ENA fee switch promoted by Wintermute; and direct cooperation with BlackRock BUIDL to launch a new stablecoin product USDtb... Furthermore, the expectation of a bright airdrop for ENA holders and stakers is also seen as a key reason for the continued rise of this token.
Previously, two major projects with a high business correlation to USDe, Ethereal and Derive (formerly Lyra), announced that they would airdrop to sENA holders (i.e., ENA stakers), with Ethereal planning to airdrop 15% of its token supply and Derive planning to airdrop 5%. Currently, users holding sENA on-chain can directly check the 'mining' status of these two projects on the Ethena homepage.
Last week, Ethereal officials held a community conference call outlining Ethereal's roadmap, features, advantages, and airdrop situation. It is worth mentioning that Ethereal developers have clearly noted the impressive performance of another strong project, Hyperliquid, and mentioned that Ethereal hopes to build a 'one-stop trading service' similar to Hyperliquid.
Ethereal: The first airdrop project in the Ethena ecosystem
Ethereal made its first appearance on September 30 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 an ecological hub position early during USDe's growth.
From an architectural perspective, Ethereal will serve as Layer 3 based on the Ethena network; from a business perspective, Ethereal will not only be equipped with a complete trading system but will also support the deployment of other USDe-related applications (such as lending).
To gain support from the Ethena community and deepen binding relationships, Ethereal expressed 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 that users face when switching between different applications for various operations, thus enhancing user and fund retention.
In this regard, Ethereal founder Fells also redefined Ethereal's positioning as 'a one-stop product supporting all DeFi operations,' where users can engage in spot or futures trading, rate arbitrage, lending, options, or even prediction operations, while also utilizing sUSDe (staked USDe) to obtain stable income.
Fells added that he hopes to create an experience for users that makes Ethereal similar to a CEX platform, but at the same time, Ethereal will maintain complete non-custodial and decentralized characteristics. For example, Ethereal will abstract away the step of paying gas through specific design, allowing users not to sign each transaction or pay gas fees.
Timeline: Q1 launch of the mainnet
According to the timeline mentioned in the conference call, Ethereal's expected development pace is as follows:
· Testnet release: expected next month;
· Testnet suspension;
· Mainnet launch: expected in Q1 2025;
Fells also mentioned that Ethereal's tangible features will be rolled out in phases, starting with USDe perpetual contract trading, followed by combination margin models, lending, and spot trading. Relevant businesses are likely to be launched successively in the first half of 2025. Additionally, Ethereal will initially only support trading of a few blue-chip tokens, with new trading pairs being introduced weekly as user and liquidity accumulation occurs.
Ethena's ecological expansion
The ecological landscape of Ethena is rapidly expanding; in addition to Ethereal mentioned in this article, the derivatives project Derive, formerly an options protocol Lyra, will also issue tokens in the first quarter of next year, and will airdrop 5% of its tokens to sENA holders.
Benefiting from the positive sentiment of the bull market, the funding rate in the futures market remains high, driving up the yield of the Ethena protocol itself as well as sUSDe. As of the time of writing, the supply of USDe has approached the 6 billion USD mark, with a real-time yield of 27%.
Meanwhile, the new stablecoin product USDtb launched in collaboration with BlackRock BUIDL also fills the biggest gap in Ethena—during negative fee periods, both the protocol itself and sUSDe may temporarily show negative yields. The structure of USDtb is similar to traditional RWA stablecoins, with its stability supported by reserve assets, and yield coming from Treasury bond rates. Once the supply of this stablecoin increases in the future, Ethena will have a reliable hedging window during negative fee periods or when fee yields fall below Treasury yield, thus addressing the risk of the protocol being easily affected by negative fees.
Well-known milk king 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 ongoing high yield and ecological expansion speed, this is not impossible. If this expectation can indeed be realized, early projects like Ethereal that seized the ecological hub position will undoubtedly benefit, further creating value feedback for ENA.
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