Original | Odaily ([@OdailyChina](https://x.com/OdailyChina))
Author | Azuma ([@azuma_eth](https://x.com/azuma_eth))
Ethena (ENA) may be one of the most eye-catching tokens in the past period.
Bitget market data shows that since hitting a bottom of 0.194 USDT in early September, ENA has rebounded to touch 1.33 USDT as of yesterday, a nearly 600% increase in the past two months.
The reasons can be found in multiple aspects. For example, the rising contract funding rate in the bull market has driven a significant increase in Ethena's protocol revenue, and the supply of USDe has also grown significantly; another reason is the buying support from the Trump family project World Liberty for ENA; as well as the expected opening of the ENA fee switch promoted by Wintermute; in addition, the direct collaboration with BlackRock BUIDL and the launch of a new stablecoin product USDtb...
Furthermore, the expected airdrop to holders and pledgers of ENA is also seen as a key reason for the continued rise of this token.
Previously, two major projects closely related to USDe, Ethereal and Derive (formerly Lyra), have officially announced airdrops to sENA holders (i.e. ENA pledgers), with Ethereal planning to airdrop 15% of its token supply and Derive planning to airdrop 5%.
Last week, Ethereal held a community conference call, outlining Ethereal's roadmap, features, advantages and airdrop situation. It is worth mentioning that Ethereal's developers have clearly noticed the impressive performance of another major project Hyperliquid recently, 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 first appeared on September 30th this year.
At that time, Ethereal founder Fells initiated a proposal on Ethena to build an on-chain trading venue supporting spot and derivative trading around USDe, where on one hand Ethena can benefit from the utility expansion of USDe, and on the other hand Ethereal can occupy the ecological hub position in the early growth of USDe.
From an architectural perspective, Ethereal will serve as a Layer 3 based on the Ethena network; from a business perspective, in addition to a complete trading system, Ethereal will also support the deployment of other applications related to USDe (such as lending).
In order to gain the support of the Ethena community and deepen the binding relationship, Ethereal stated in the initial proposal that it will airdrop 15% of its tokens to ENA pledgers.
Latest Dynamics: Learning from Hyperliquid
In the latest community conference call, the Ethereal team members emphasized Hyperliquid and believed that the key to the project's success lies in "providing a complete set of trading services", solving the hidden pain points of users having to switch between different applications to perform different operations, which is more conducive to user and capital retention.
In this regard, Ethereal founder Fells has also re-described Ethereal's positioning - "a one-stop product supporting all DeFi operations", where users can conduct spot or contract trading, rate arbitrage, lending, options, and even prediction operations, while also earning stable income by leveraging sUSDe (pledged USDe).
Fells added that he hopes to build Ethereal into a platform similar to a CEX in terms of user experience, but Ethereal will also maintain full non-custodial and decentralization. For example, Ethereal will abstract away the payment of gas through specific design, so that users do not need to sign for each transaction or pay gas fees.
Timeline: Mainnet Launch in Q1
According to the timeline mentioned in the conference call, Ethereal's upcoming development pace is as follows:
- Testnet release: expected next month;
- Testnet shutdown;
- Mainnet launch: expected in Q1 2025.
Fells also mentioned that Ethereal's concrete functions will be rolled out in stages, starting with USDe perpetual contract trading, followed by portfolio margin mode, lending and spot trading, which are most likely to be launched in the first half of 2025. In addition, Ethereal will only support trading of a few blue-chip tokens when it is first launched, and will add new trading pairs on a weekly basis as user and liquidity accumulate.
Expansion of the Ethena Ecosystem
The Ethena ecosystem is rapidly expanding. In addition to the Ethereal mentioned in this article, Derive, a derivative project that was previously an options protocol Lyra, will also issue tokens in the first quarter of next year and airdrop 5% of the tokens to sENA holders.
Driven by the positive sentiment of the bull market, the contract market's funding rate has remained at a high level, driving up the yields of the Ethena protocol itself and sUSDe. As of the time of writing, the supply of USDe has approached the $60 billion mark, with a real-time yield of 27%.
At the same time, the new stablecoin product USDtb launched by Ethena in collaboration with BlackRock BUIDL has also filled the biggest gap in Ethena - the temporary negative yield of the protocol itself and sUSDe during negative fee rate periods. The structure of USDtb is similar to traditional RWA-backed stablecoins, with its stability supported by reserve assets and its yield coming from government bond interest rates. In the future, as the supply of this stablecoin grows, Ethena will have a reliable hedging window during negative fee rate periods or when the fee rate yield is lower than government bond yields, thereby resolving the vulnerability of the protocol to negative fee rates.
Arthur Hayes, the famous "Milk King" and founder of BitMEX, predicted earlier this year that "USDe will surpass USDT to become the largest US dollar stablecoin". Although the supply scale between the two is still dozens of times apart, considering Ethena's continuously high yields and the rapid expansion of its ecosystem, this expectation is not impossible. And if this expectation is realized, the ecosystem sub-projects like Ethereal that have occupied the ecological hub position early on will certainly benefit, which in turn will feed back value to ENA.
