Ethena

The economic model

USDe is not a reserve-backed dollar; it is a hedged position sold as one. Ethena holds spot and liquid-staked collateral, shorts an equivalent notional of perpetual futures on centralised venues, and earns whatever the funding rate, the basis and the collateral's staking rewards produce. A third leg carries the money-market yield: liquid stablecoins and Treasury bills, joined in June 2026 by AAA-rated tokenized collateralised loan obligations. In June 2026 the average funding rate was 3.85% and sUSDe returned 3.84% at month end, against 3.6% on a 30-day average. That is the whole business: when funding compresses, so does the product.

The risk allocation is deliberately asymmetric. Only USDe that is staked as sUSDe earns; unstaked USDe earns nothing, which concentrates yield on a subset of holders and makes the headline rate higher than the protocol's blended return. When funding turns negative, sUSDe's yield goes to zero first. Behind it is the Reserve Fund, roughly $62.0m at the end of June 2026, or 1.4% of the $4.46bn supply, and essentially unchanged since mid-2025 while supply has swung violently. Exchange counterparty failure, custodian failure and a forced unwind at a bad basis all land on holders. Supply itself records the sensitivity: after $1.6bn of redemptions in late April 2026, USDe fell back to levels last seen in November 2024, from a peak above $13.7bn in 2025.

ENA has no cash-flow claim. The Risk Committee set four activation conditions for a fee switch: USDe supply above $6bn, cumulative revenue above $250m, listings on four of the five largest derivatives venues, and an sUSDe spread of 5.0 to 7.5 points over the benchmark rate. All four were met by September 2025, and the Foundation's own thread states that the split of revenue to sENA remains to be determined. As of the June 2026 governance update, published 17 July 2026, no distribution had been made. DefiLlama's split between $363m of annualised fees and $12m of annualised protocol revenue on 25 July 2026 reflects the design: nearly everything the strategy earns is paid to sUSDe or retained, and any capture for ENA mechanically reduces the yield that makes USDe competitive.

How it is governed

Ethena Foundation with ENA and staked ENA (sENA) governance and a Risk Committee that sets and monitors activation thresholds. Minting and redemption are restricted to whitelisted counterparties; collateral is held with custodians and mirrored to exchanges through off-exchange settlement, so operational control is centralised even where the token is not.

Where it runs

Ethereum, with USDe bridged to other networks