Equity perpetuals as a basis venue: $150 trillion of underlying, funding uncorrelated to crypto, and the execution infrastructure already proven at scale.
A meaningful widening of what backs USDe ๐
Extending USDe backing: basis on equity perpetuals.
Equity perpetuals now carry nearly >$6bn of open interest across 200 contracts on the same venues Ethena already executes, growing >10x since March.
Funding rates on equity perpetuals have paid 15-20% on average, >5x the Bitcoin funding rates in 2026, with near-zero correlation to crypto funding.
The underlying asset base is >$150 trillion compared to ~$2.5 trillion of crypto, making this the most scalable extension of the basis allocation to date. We expect RWA perpetuals to eclipse crypto allocations in USDe's backing within 12-24 months.
Safe implementation of the equity basis trade at large size requires the exact infrastructure Ethena has already operated at scale with 0bps of impairment on over $30b of mint and redeem flow for >2.5 years: precise delta-neutral execution at scale, secure off-exchange custody & settlement, and institutional-grade security practices.
The first partner exchange announcements and deployments will begin over the course of the next few weeks.
Details in the link below: