Ethena Expands USDe Backing to Equity Perpetual Futures

Ethena, the protocol behind the USDe synthetic dollar, announced on August 28, 2026, a major strategic expansion of its yield-generating model into equity perpetual futures, a move aimed at revitalizing its backing assets after a significant contraction in supply. The shift represents a pivot from the crypto-centric basis trades that originally powered USDe toward a rapidly growing market for leveraged stock trading.

The core of Ethena's strategy involves applying its established delta-neutral framework to equity perpetuals. This involves holding exposure to an asset while simultaneously shorting its perpetual futures contract to collect funding payments from leveraged long traders. The protocol is targeting equity perpetual markets where open interest has surged to approximately $6.2 billion, up from less than $1 billion in March. Funding rates in this sector have been substantially higher than in crypto, averaging around 14% annualized on Hyperliquid and 17.5% on Binance in recent months. By comparison, Bitcoin perpetual funding averaged only 2.2% year-to-date through August 11.

This expansion is driven by a sharp deterioration in the yields from Ethena's original crypto basis...