According to Woofun AI, Ethena (ENA), a protocol known for its $4 billion “synthetic dollar” USdE, is shifting its strategic focus beyond the cryptocurrency market to try to obtain richer and more stable returns through increasingly prosperous leveraged stock trading. The agreement was announced on Friday and plans to expand its underlying asset-based trading strategy to the field of stock perpetual contracts to meet the current challenges of narrowing returns in the crypto market.
This shift marks a critical step in Ethena's quest for a new revenue engine after USdE supply fell from a peak of around $15 billion to below $5 billion. Notably, the value of open positions has surged from less than $1 billion in March to $6.2 billion, showing the sector's huge potential for growth and liquidity appeal.
Judging from the comparison between profit logic and market data, stock perpetual contracts show significant profit advantages. According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the average funding rate for such contracts on the Hyperliquid platform over the past few months was about 14%, while this figure was as high as 17.5% on the Binance platform. In contrast, Bitcoin's financing rate during the same period was only in single digits, highlighting the huge gap between the two. Ethena pointed out that Bitcoin's financing rate averaged 11% in 2024, dropped to 4.9% in 2025, and dropped to 2.2% as of August 11 this year.
At the same time, the situation with stock perpetual contracts is quite different: once the relevant market grows to a certain size, 94% of the daily financing rate on the Hyperliquid platform is positive, compared to 97% on the Binance platform. The median financing rate for stock perpetual contracts is 13.9%, while the corresponding value for Bitcoin is only 3.9%.
This difference stems from a fundamental difference in the structure of the market. Co-founder Guy Young explained in an article on the X platform, “Another characteristic that makes this strategy more attractive than cryptocurrencies is that the distribution of financing amounts is naturally positive.” Since stocks tend to maintain an upward trend over a long period of time, this continues to generate demand for leveraged long positions; during a bear market, cryptocurrency financing rates may decrease or even become negative due to falling demand for leveraged products.
Furthermore, the financing rate for stock perpetual contracts has almost nothing to do with Bitcoin's financing rate, which means that USdE's revenue stream will no longer rely too much on fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market. In terms of market size, the total value of the global stock market in July was about 166.5 trillion US dollars, while the total value of the cryptocurrency market was about 2.2 trillion US dollars. Although the current size of stock perpetual contracts is still far smaller than similar products in the cryptocurrency field, the potential opportunities behind them are much larger.
This strategic expansion comes on the heels of major internal reforms. On Thursday, the Ethena Foundation announced large-scale adjustments to the ENA Token economic model, abolished the monthly VC unlocking mechanism, and clarified a plan to use the revenue generated by the Ethena business for token repurchases.
This strategy is essentially the same market-making strategy that Ethena has adopted for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and SOL since the launch of USdE: holding an asset while shorting its perpetual contract to collect financing fees paid by investors who trade long with leverage.
However, due to the sharp drop in cryptocurrency prices and the cooling of the market climate this year, the profit margin of this traditional market-making strategy has been drastically reduced, forcing Ethena to find new growth points. In addition to switching to stock perpetual contracts, Ethena also announced the establishment of a $1 billion FalconX program last week to further expand its application scenarios by using USDE as collateral to provide overcollateralized institutional loans. Ethena is expected to announce partners and application plans for its first stock strategy in the next few weeks to accelerate the implementation of this strategy. From a longer-term perspective, the company expects that within 12 to 24 months, real-world assets-backed perpetual contracts will account for more of the USDE-related business than cryptocurrency derivatives. This is not only an adjustment to the business structure, but also a redefinition of future revenue sources.
This shift in strategy reflects Ethena's determination to find new revenue streams after USdE supply dropped from a peak of nearly $15 billion to less than $5 billion. Within a 12 to 24 month time frame, Ethena expects real-world assets-backed perpetual contracts to account for more of the USDE-related business than cryptocurrency derivatives.
This extension from cryptographic native assets to real-world assets (RWA) not only helps spread risk, but also uses the long-term upward trend in the stock market to obtain more stable income from financing rates. As the scale of stock perpetual contracts on platforms such as Hyperliquid and Binance expands, Ethena is expected to take the lead in this emerging field and provide more attractive earnings performance for USde users. Following FalconX's institutional loan program, this is another important layout for Ethena's diversified income strategy. It indicates that stablecoin agreements are gradually breaking through the boundaries of the traditional crypto market and exploring a broader financial ecosystem.