Author: Weilin, PANews
On December 16, the DeFi project Ethena Labs announced the official launch of its new stablecoin USDtb. As a blockchain-based US dollar stablecoin, 90% of USDtb's reserve funds are invested in BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, and it collaborates with the leading real-world asset tokenization company Securitize.
On the first day of launch, according to DefiLlama data, the TVL of USDtb reached $64.5 million. Previously, Ethena CEO Guy Young predicted that the first-month TVL of USDtb would reach $500 million to $1 billion. He also said that some TradFi entities, although they have not really touched other cryptocurrencies, currently have a considerable exposure to what Ethena is doing.
Supported by BlackRock BUIDL fund, to cope with market volatility in bear market
The newly launched USDtb is a relatively traditional crypto stablecoin, which looks almost the same as USDC and USDT. The only difference is that Ethena uses BlackRock's BUIDL treasury fund as collateral to support this stablecoin. BUIDL is a tokenized fund that invests in assets equivalent to the US dollar (such as cash, US Treasuries, and repurchase agreements). Ethena does not manage the financial assets, but entrusts them to different banks or different service providers in the real world. Basically, BlackRock and Securitize are responsible for the entire process. Therefore, the product principle of USDtb is completely different from Ethena's flagship stablecoin USDe.
USDtb will serve as Ethena's alternative stablecoin, taking over the capital of USDe in extreme market conditions. Ethena's CEO Guy Young recently introduced in the Unchained podcast that USDtb looks very similar to ordinary stablecoins, and it does not have its own yield, so retail users who buy it will not get the same yield as using a government bond fund. He said that these two products actually work in parallel, and in 98% of cases, when the cryptocurrency exchange rate appears more attractive than the traditional financial exchange rate, USDe will operate the same as it does now. Then, to the extent that the environment changes (such as entering a bear market), users always have the option to close their positions and enter USDtb, and retain assets on their balance sheets.
Therefore, USDtb may help USDe holders "cope with difficult market conditions". Ethena Labs stated in the announcement on December 16 that "Ethena will be able to close the hedging positions behind USDe and reallocate its supporting assets to USDtb to further mitigate the relevant risks."
90% of the stablecoin is supported by BlackRock's BUIDL, and it collaborates with the blockchain tokenization company Securitize. One of Ethena's committee members, Block Analiticia, pointed out in an approved proposal that stablecoins like USDC will account for the remaining 10% of USDtb's reserves, and these stablecoins can provide additional liquidity on weekends or other periods when the government bond market is not tradable. The "core" part of USDtb's smart contract has undergone three full audits by Pashov, Quantstamp and Cyfrin in October.
USDtb may drive a large influx of capital from TradFi
Ethena Lab's synthetic stablecoin USDe was launched in February this year, and then grew rapidly, now the third largest stablecoin after USDT and USDC. Since November 1, that is, a month and a half ago, its market value has more than doubled, reaching nearly $6 billion, even surpassing the long-established DeFi native stablecoin DAI.
The key to the success of USDe is the yield it provides. The token has an annualized yield of 27%, much higher than the 12.5% provided by DAI and USDS. USDe is created by depositing Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana into the Ethena protocol, and then opening a short (bearish) position on exchanges like Bybit. This creates the so-called "delta neutral" position, where the value of the asset and the short position offset each other, thereby maintaining the overall price stability.
Currently, as most traders are bullish on cryptocurrencies, they pay funds to Ethena to short, and the protocol transfers these funds to USDe holders through staking. As long as this situation continues, the yield of USDe should remain relatively high. But if traders turn bearish, Ethena will not be able to provide such high yields.
In addition, Ethena's Staked USDe (sUSDe) is a yield-bearing token, where users can earn additional yields by staking USDe tokens. Through staking rewards and basis trading strategies, sUSDe provides high yields for holders.
Blockworks Research recently tweeted about the different ways Ethena is primarily used. Pendle, with over $1 billion in assets, is the top destination for Staked USDe, followed by Aave. Ethena CEO Guy Young recently introduced in the Unchained podcast that about 50% to 60% of Pendle's TVL is built on sUSDe. Aave has added over $1 billion in TVL in a few months.
Returning to the new stablecoin USDtb itself, after the launch of USDtb, Ethena's growth manager Seraphim Czecker said that Ethena's roadmap is clear:
- Bring conservative TradFi into USDtb
- Help them acclimate to USDe
- Assist them in understanding on-chain opportunities like Aave, Maker, etc.
One of the founders of the blockchain research and development company Delphi Labs, José Maria Macedo, predicted that USDtb will become the largest tokenized treasury product within a month of its launch. Ethena's growth lead Seraphim Czecker said USDtb has the potential to scale to $100 billion, as the company can now effectively allocate capital in a bearish market environment by "creating a 'floor' APY around treasury bill yields." "USDtb will drive a large influx of capital from TradFi into our domain," Seraphim concluded.
Currently, Ethena has indeed surpassed a bunch of crypto-native protocols on many different metrics. One of them is that it has consistently been one of the highest "generators" of fees. It has repeatedly surpassed Tether, Uniswap, Ethereum, Jito, Solana, and has become an important project for DeFi user interactions.
