Ethena plans equity-perpetual strategy as crypto funding yields weaken
The USDe issuer says it will expand its basis trade into equity perpetuals and expects real-world-asset derivatives to overtake crypto perps in its backing within 12 to 24 months.
By The Third AnglePublished 3 min read
Illustrative market imagery; it does not depict Ethena or a specific perpetual contract. Photo: Unsplash · Unsplash License
Ethena plans to extend the basis-trading strategy behind its USDe synthetic dollar into equity perpetual futures, moving beyond the bitcoin, ether and solana contracts that have historically generated much of its funding income. The company's announcement says it will announce its first exchange partners and deployments in the coming weeks.
CoinDesk independently reported that equity-perpetual open interest has grown from less than $1 billion in March to about $6.2 billion. Ethena said recent annualized funding averaged about 14% on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance, versus bitcoin's lower rate this year; those are historical observations, not a guaranteed return.
The same trade in a different market
The proposed expansion keeps the basic structure of Ethena's existing strategy: hold exposure to an asset, short its perpetual contract and collect funding paid by leveraged long traders. Equity perpetuals give the protocol access to a broader set of markets, but they also add venue, liquidity, basis, counterparty and liquidation risks that can change as the market grows.
Ethena said equity funding was positive on 94% of days on Hyperliquid and 97% on Binance after those markets reached meaningful scale. CoinDesk reported the median equity funding rate at 13.9%, compared with 3.9% for bitcoin, while noting that the protocol's current USDe supply is below $5 billion after a peak near $15 billion in 2025.
A plan, not a new backing mix yet
Ethena expects real-world-asset perpetuals to overtake crypto derivatives in USDe's backing within 12 to 24 months. That is a company projection, not a current allocation: the announcement does not identify the first venues, deployment sizes, risk limits or the amount of USDe backing that would move into the strategy.
The diversification effort follows weaker crypto funding and a broader restructuring of Ethena's backing. The protocol has also described a $1 billion FalconX warehouse facility for overcollateralized institutional loans, but the equity-perpetual initiative still needs named partners, live positions and transparent reporting before its contribution to USDe's returns can be measured.
The relevant checkpoint is therefore execution. Higher historical equity funding may give Ethena another source of yield and reduce dependence on crypto cycles, but funding rates are variable and a larger market does not remove the operational risks of hedging it.
