Ethena Plans to Add Stock-Linked Trades to USDe Backing Strategy

Ethena to expand USDe backing with equity perpetuals

Ethena announced on Friday that it plans to add equity-perpetual basis trades to the strategy behind its USDe stablecoin. A stablecoin is a digital token designed to keep a steady value, usually pegged to the US dollar.

The move would extend the synthetic dollar into stock-linked derivative markets. However, the rollout is still forthcoming. Ethena stated that its first partner exchange announcements and deployments would begin “over the course of the next few weeks.”

The company did not name specific venues or disclose any current equity allocation in the announcement. For users, this means the change is a planned addition to the backing strategy rather than an immediate portfolio shift.

Key details yet to be disclosed

• The size of the equity allocation remains unspecified.
• The eligible contracts for trading have not been listed.
• Partner exchanges have not been named.
• Detailed risk parameters are not yet public.

Ethena’s documentation explains that volatile assets, including tokenized equities, are generally paired with corresponding short futures positions of approximately the same notional size. In this setup, movements in the spot asset are generally offset by movements in the hedge. The announcement did not clarify whether the planned rollout would use tokenized equities, another form of spot exposure, or a different trade construction.

Funding rates and market size

Ethena said equity perpetuals currently carry more than $6 billion of open interest across 200 contracts. It noted these contracts have paid average funding rates of 15% to 20%. Funding rates are periodic payments made between traders in perpetual contract markets to keep the price anchored to the underlying asset.

Ethena also projected that real-world-asset perpetuals would exceed crypto allocations in USDe’s backing within 12 to 24 months.

As a point of comparison, Binance’s TSLAUSDT perpetual showed about $41.0 million of open interest and an eight-hour funding rate of 0.00436% when checked. Hyperliquid’s ORCL-USDC market showed about $16.1 million of open interest and displayed funding of 0.0010%.

What is confirmed

Ethena plans to add equity-perpetual basis trades to USDe’s backing strategy. The first exchange announcements and deployments are expected in the coming weeks. USDe’s circulating supply was listed at about 4.063 billion tokens on Etherscan when checked.

What is still unclear

It is unclear which exchanges will partner with Ethena, how large the equity allocation will be, and whether the firm will use tokenized equities or other forms of spot exposure for the trades.

Why this matters

The move signals an effort to diversify the assets backing USDe beyond traditional crypto holdings. If successful, it could bridge DeFi lending and yield strategies with traditional stock market derivatives. The long-term projection suggests real-world-asset perpetuals may become a dominant portion of the backing strategy within two years.

What happens next

Ethena said the first exchange announcements and deployments will begin in the coming weeks.

Sources

• The Defiant