Ethena Labs is experiencing substantial growth in its stablecoin offerings, particularly with its USDe stablecoin, which recently saw its balances on the centralized exchange Binance surge to nearly $735 million. This spike came just one day after Binance announced a competitive 12% annual percentage rate (APR) on deposits in the Binance Earn program. Tom Wan, head of data at Entropy Advisors, highlighted on X (formerly Twitter) that if this trend continues, USDe could soon overtake its rival Bybit, which currently boasts around $838 million in USDe holdings, as indicated by Dune analytics.
As of now, USDe is the third-largest circulating stablecoin globally, with a market capitalization exceeding $14 billion. This marks a staggering 145% growth since June when the stablecoin’s market cap was approximately $5.7 billion. Over the past year, USDe has seen growth surpassing 200%, significantly outpacing the increases of other major stablecoins—Circle’s USDC grew by 87%, while Tether’s USDT rose by 39.5% in the same timeframe. The total value locked (TVL) for Ethena Labs’ stablecoins, USDe and USDtb, has now exceeded $16 billion, split between over $14 billion for USDe and $1.83 billion for USDtb, according to data from DeFiLlama.
USDtb, Ethena Labs’ synthetic stablecoin, stands as the ninth largest with a market cap of $1.8 billion, heavily backed by over 90% of its reserves in BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund. Despite the impressive growth of its stablecoins, Ethena Labs’ native token, ENA, has not shared the same fate. Currently trading at $0.60, ENA has dropped by 14% in the past week and 25% over the last two weeks, based on CoinGecko data. While still reflecting a noteworthy 117% increase year-to-date, it remains far from its all-time high of $1.52.
Market analysts have noted that the rapid adoption of stablecoins is largely driven by factors such as exchange distribution, attractive APRs, and increasing institutional interest, which are outpacing the adoption of utility or governance tokens like ENA. In light of ENA’s underperformance, Ethena Labs is reportedly looking into implementing a “fee switch” mechanism designed to redistribute a portion of protocol fees to ENA holders, potentially providing a boost to demand.
Recent strategic initiatives by Ethena Labs are also noteworthy. On September 12, the company launched USDe and its staked version, sUSDe, on the Layer 1 blockchain Avalanche, marking an important cross-chain expansion. This rollout included partnerships with various decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap, Pharaoh Exchange, LFJ, and BlackholeDEX, aimed at enhancing spot liquidity. Earlier this year, Ethena expanded its footprint to the TON blockchain, introducing USDe and sUSDe and enabling users on Telegram’s platform—home to nearly one billion users—to access stablecoin yield through the in-app wallets.
