According to CoinDesk, Ethena, the protocol behind the $3.4 billion yield-generating 'synthetic dollar' token USDe, has announced plans to allocate a portion of its $235 million USDT stablecoin collateral and $45 million surplus reserve into yield-generating real-world asset (RWA) offerings. This move aims to diversify its investment portfolio and enhance returns for its investors.
BlackRock's BUIDL fund has pitched for a $34 million allocation from Ethena's $45 million reserve. The BUIDL fund, represented by an Ethereum-based token, is a money market fund seeking to capitalize on Ethena's investment strategy. Jonathan Espinosa from tokenization platform Securitize, BUIDL's distribution partner, confirmed this application in a recent post.
Additionally, Steakhouse Financial has applied with a lending vault on the DeFi platform Morpho Blue. This vault is overcollateralized by wrapped bitcoin (wBTC), wrapped staked ether (wstETH), and Backed's tokenized Treasury Bills product (bIB01). Mountain Protocol, the issuer of the USDM yield-bearing stablecoin, has also shown interest in applying, with founder Michael Carrica indicating that a proposal will be presented soon.
Ethena's founder, Guy Young, stated that all prospective applicants must publicly post their proposals on the governance forum. This open competition reflects the growing trend of tokenized RWAs being utilized in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. Recently, DeFi lender MakerDAO announced plans to invest $1 billion of the backing assets of the DAI stablecoin in tokenized Treasury products. Similarly, ArbitrumDAO, an Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem development organization, concluded a contest to allocate the equivalent of 35 million ARB tokens in tokenized offerings.
Ethena's initiative highlights the increasing integration of real-world assets into the crypto-native DeFi world, aiming to provide more robust and diversified investment opportunities for its users.
